Partnership news

BAUS x SmashUrology: free FRCS Part 2 viva revision for course delegates

If you're booked onto the BAUS FRCS (Urol) Revision Course for Part II, 21 to 25 September at Royal Leamington Spa, your access code is either in your inbox already or on its way.

BAUS have licensed SmashUrology for their members, and Part 2 candidates are first through the door. Every delegate on the course gets free access to the SmashUrology VivaSuite, the Interactive Exam Room and the full flashcard library. It's all covered by BAUS as part of your place on the course, so there's nothing for you to pay.

Part 2 is a completely different exam to Part 1 and most people are not entirely familiar. Part 1 rewards recognition. You see five options, one of them is right, and your brain does the work quietly. Part 2 rewards production and expressing yourself. You've got to build a coherent answer out loud, in order, with someone staring at you and interrupting. Plenty of candidates who sailed through the MCQs come unstuck here, and it's not because they don't know the material. It's because they've never actually had to say it.

What you get as a delegate

BAUS issue a unique access code to each delegate. Sign up on the site, redeem the code, and you're in. I've put together a short walkthrough of exactly how to do that, it also shows the interactive viva avatar in action so you can see what you're getting before you start.

Redeeming your BAUS access code, plus a live demo of the interactive viva.

If you're registered and your code hasn't arrived, just email us and we'll sort it.

Why this material is different

Every scenario is written and reviewed by urologists who have sat this exam themselves, recently. The viva doesn't test whether you know a guideline exists. It tests whether you can take a position, justify it, and then hold it when someone pushes back at you.

So the scenarios are built around the places where the answer isn't clean. The small renal mass in the 78 year old with one kidney. The persistent PSA after prostatectomy. The ureteric injury you pick up on day three. Every answer gets checked against the current EAU recommendation and the strength of that recommendation, because "weak recommendation, discuss it and offer it" and "strong recommendation, do it" are two very different things to be saying to an examiner.

600+ active candidates, 30+ countries, 200,000+ questions answered.

My own experience of the BAUS FRCS Viva Course

I sat this course myself and it was the thing that kickstarted my Part 2 prep properly. Before it I'd been telling myself I was preparing but I wasn't, not really. I was reading.

I'll be straight about how it went for me - when it was my turn to answer I was rubbish. Terribly poor, on topics I knew and topics I had no idea about. In fact, there is actually so much you pick up just sitting there listening to everyone else answer. Watching someone structure a case cleanly, or seeing a good candidate get pushed hard and not panic, teaches you something a textbook never will. Probably half of what I learnt that week came from the chair rather than the hot seat.

The sessions I found most helpful

And a thank you to Helena Burden, who ran the course when I did it and set the tone for the entire week.

The other thing I hadn't expected was the people. I met colleagues on that course who I then went on to practise with almost daily afterwards, whenever our shifts happened to line up. Special mention to Saad Siddiqui, Yassir Rasheed and Omer Farooq, who all helped me out enormously and who I'd now count as lifelong friends. You turn up for the teaching and you leave with a study group.

My one regret is that I turned up totally unprepared. I'd done very little beforehand, so a big chunk of that week went on taking content in rather than practising getting it back out, and taking content in is the bit I could have done at home for free. The people who got the most out of it were the ones who arrived already knowing the material and came to be tested on it. If I could go back I'd have spent the fortnight before getting the facts solid, so that the five days could be spent entirely on performance. Which is exactly why the access opens before the course rather than on day one. You've got a week. Use it.

And enjoy it too. We had a great laugh, went out exploring the city most evenings and made a fairly serious habit of dessert. The venue has moved to Leamington Spa now so I can't vouch for the food, and their kebabs are probably a bit too fancy for me personally, but you get my point. It's a few intense days and the people around you are going through exactly the same thing.

How to use SmashUrology resource alongside the course

Say the answers out loud, speak in front of the mirror. Almost nobody does it - I actually did occassionally and I at least believe it helped a lot.

Reading a model answer, nodding along and thinking "yeah, I'd have said that" is the most common way to walk into Part 2 underprepared. You haven't said it really, you've recognised it. And the gap between those two things only ever shows up when you're sat in the chair and the first sentence won't come out.

So my suggestion for the fortnight around the course: pick one VivaSuite scenario a night, set the timer, talk the whole thing through without stopping, and record it on your phone. Listening back is grim for about three days and then it becomes the most useful thing you'll do. You'll hear the filler, the hedging, the fact it takes you 40 seconds to get to a management plan. All fixable, but only once you've heard it.

Use the mock vivas on the course for the pressure, and use the VivaSuite for the volume. You get a handful of mock vivas on any course. You need dozens.

And find yourself a practice partner, ideally two. The honest problem with that is availability. On calls, nights, annual leave, small children, it never lines up as neatly as you plan it. That's the gap the interactive viva is there to fill. When there's nobody free at 9pm and you've still got an hour left in you, open it up and do a viva out loud with it, instead of reading quietly and telling yourself that counts.

Part 1 candidates and ST3 applicants

Delegates on the BAUS Scientific Basis of Urology course get free access to the Part 1 question bank and flashcards too.

And there's more coming: BAUS members applying for ST3 in urology will get access to the ST3 Interview Hub from December. Details nearer the time.

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