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Bismillah. I write this as a way of expressing gratitude to both Allah the Almighty and to Dr Naseer Khan’s amazing community that has helped me so much in my journey thus far.
Score
- My score: 131/180 (72.77%)
- Passing score: 120/180 (66.66%)
Nov 2018 PLAB 1 Cancellation
I began my preparation for PLAB 1 six months into my House Job and was supposed to sit for the exam on 1st November 2018 in Islamabad, Pakistan. I could only secure 7 days of leave and that was my only dedicated study period, although I’d been going through the PLABABLE question bank at an EXTREMELY leisurely pace for the past months; I’m talking a maximum of 10 questions per day on good days. Naturally I was struggling to finish the question bank, which was my only resource along with the immensely useful patient.co.uk website, when I received the news of the exam’s cancellation on the eve of the exam. Thus followed a period of severe confusion and uncertainty mixed with a slight sense of relief that culminated in my contacting the GMC and rescheduling my exam for March 2019.
March 2019 PLAB 1
6 months later, I was again only able to secure 9 days of leave before the exam which forced me to work extremely hard to get through the PLABABLE question bank during this period. The process was easier this time around given that I had already gone through the majority of the question bank before. These 9 days were my only dedicated study period before the exam, resulting in me being back in the same situation I was in the first time around. Hence, I showed up on the day of the exam not having done the anatomy section and not having done a second read of the question bank; both mistakes that you should avoid.
Sources
- PLABABLE question bank
- patient.co.uk website
Exam Day
On the day of the exam itself, my name wasn’t in the list of candidates scheduled to take the test at the venue and the local testing agency (the British Council in Pakistan) had to contact the GMC directly to verify my registration for the test. By the time I actually started my test, I was 25 minutes behind everyone else but they gave me extra time to compensate. I was understandably flustered and messed up the most important aspect of this test: TIME MANAGEMENT. I cannot stress this enough. PLAB 1 is all about time management. The actual content of the exam is not at all hard to master.
As a result of my lack of focus on time management, I could not attempt 10 questions and had to leave them unanswered. Additionally, a significant portion of the exam seemed very unfamiliar to those of us who had used the PLABABLE question bank as their only resource and it wasn’t as straightforward as we had all assumed it would be. As a result, I was fully expecting to fail the exam but by the grace and mercy of Allah, I have passed. And thus I thought I would share my experiences with the rest of you as they are not exactly conventional. Given below are the details of my test and the preparation material used.
Advice
My final words of advice would be to focus on time management during the exam and not to panic when facing unfamiliar questions in the exam as PLABABLE gives you a solid enough base to build upon and use when solving these questions. Good luck!
Regards,
Dr. Qazi Idrees Imtiazuddin.
