Grayscale 2 day FRCR Viva Course:
The original Grayscale Course is different from other available FRCR exam type courses. Its success and efficacy is based upon collective years of experience, based on training UK registrars, US residents, European trainees and other international candidates for their examinations.
This course is an intensive long 2 day course with preparation for the viva. Although there is overlap with some long cases, it is not a specific preparation course for the long cases or the rapids (but see pre and post course materials). It is not an assessment course in the sense that you will not undergo a complete exam with some minor comments or score after. It is a small group personalised teaching course. You will take multiple viva cases, and be instructed by the Grayscale Faculty on how you personally can improve and score higher on every case you see. You will see more cases than on any course, and you will see more FRCR cases that you have never seen before. All the candidates will see all the cases.
Includes light breakfast, excellent hot lunch, coffee/tea/cakes throughout day. Premier central London venue (De Vere West One).
This course is an intensive long 2 day course with preparation for the viva. Although there is overlap with some long cases, it is not a specific preparation course for the long cases or the rapids (but see pre and post course materials). It is not an assessment course in the sense that you will not undergo a complete exam with some minor comments or score after. It is a small group personalised teaching course. You will take multiple viva cases, and be instructed by the Grayscale Faculty on how you personally can improve and score higher on every case you see. You will see more cases than on any course, and you will see more FRCR cases that you have never seen before. All the candidates will see all the cases.
Includes light breakfast, excellent hot lunch, coffee/tea/cakes throughout day. Premier central London venue (De Vere West One).
Course Material:
The course selects the best of thousands of FRCR type films accumulated over decades by Dr Vlahos and bequeathed to him by retiring specialist radiologists in bone, paediatric, cardiac, thoracic and other areas. These are added to by the new Grayscale Faculty, Drs Joanna Moser, Jaymin Patel and Ali Shah now delivering the courses. All the best films. Cases that, outside of the FRCR exam banks, are in very limited availability. We guarantee you that you will see extensive material that you have not seen elsewhere. You will see all modalities but there is strong emphasis on plain films because that is where most candidates get into trouble, desperately begging for a CT or MRI study that never comes from the examiner.
Course Format:
It is not enough to have the best cases, you need the best guidance on how to deal with these. It is our commitment to you, to use our experience to present this material in a way that is effective and memorable. The focus of the cases you will see are cases that you might encounter in the viva or the written cases. We will not spend a lot of time on the rapid cases in the course, because we will have spent a lot of time on that subject before the course. We will give you very valuable guidance for the rapid reporting exam which unnecessarily trips up so many candidates. You will not sit complete exam sets, other courses will give you that necessary experience. We do not have time for that. You will take cases yourself, sitting in front of a big projector screen, in turns, in front of the group. We will also put you under individual viva pressure at a traditional x-ray screen. Why? This is close and personal. It is faster too. You can see loads of cases, and if you are watching you are still involved. This is pressurizing, but you will quickly relax as you realize your peers are in the same boat. Even though you may be taking a case we will, hopefully with some humour, try to engage the entire group into every case. We can reassure you in advance that no one else will get the cases right all the time. You will be pushed to the best of your ability, but never embarrassed or humiliated. You will be on your toes throughout, not just waiting for your turn.
We start slowly and address common problems in case presentation. We ramp up the speed till you are seeing multiple cases quickly. We will interject with minor comparisons of situations that seem similar to reinforce points. We will talk through a few short summary topics that cause confusion. At the end of the course we finish off with a rapid fire session where we just try to ram your mental database with as many great cases as time permits. We are flexible and we can somewhat adapt to needs. There is no shortage of cases!
The cases you will see will be tough, but are all fair exam cases. Simply, you would not get these tough cases "back to back to back" in the exam. Why do we focus on these? Well because these films are critical in the exam. You can course along on easier material and then one tough case and your confidence erodes and your exam success ebbs away. Nail that hard case and the opposite happens, you are confident, your scores increase and above all the examiner starts to relax that he or she is with a candidate that will pass. Go to other courses to see the routine films again and again, Iwe will show you the stuff they cannot and that you will likely have not seen.
The course is constantly evolving and the exciting three faculty members taking over the reigns from Dr Vlahos are no excpetion. We truly believe, supported by the feedback to date that the course is the best you may attend. But that does not suffice. The structure will continue to evolve in an attempt to continue to maximise the benefit for attendees.
The 2 day portion of the course remains exclusively focused on passing the viva portion of the examination with some cases that can be used for long case written reports too. This is a comprehensive instruction to assist you in evaluating unknown or difficult cases in a rational way, constructing pertinent or combined differentials. But it is not enough to simply make the diagnosis. You must milk that case for everything it is worth and present it in a way that is clinically pertinent and distinguishes you from other candidates. You need to aim for a 7-8 on cases you know, not a 6!
The course still conveys this information in many different engaging ways, single cases, multiple case, mini-vivas, collections of related cases, micro-summaries/lectures, rapid fire techniques and many more themed groups of cases. This drives home the material and its mimics. We are always trying to highlight your strengths but probing to evaluate and improve your weaknesses.
But prior to the course we want to get to know you better and help you. You are paying for a weekend course. But this stuff is some bonus stuff we do for trainees. A few weeks before the course we start sending out individual cases, stacks of images of a case or select images. We ask specific "examiner" questions. You can answer and every few days we guide or reply by email. Maybe more images on the same cases follow. You elect whether you want to participate or not. If you do, you are getting personalised feedback on interpretation and analysis and we get advanced knowledge of your areas of strength and weakness. If you don’t respond because you are shy, that’s okay too. You get the answers and teaching points regardless.
Everyone is increasingly worried about the rapid reporting. Mostly because the quality of “packs” available is variable and so indeed is the exam. How do you handle this? Well we have a scientific strategic approach to the exam. But we do not want to waste a lot of time on the rapid reporting. So we do this pre-course. We send you detailed radiological approaches and strategy for dealing with this section. You get three practice packs before the course.
After the course, we are usually in pre-exam mode but we are still here for advice and send out some special observation training cases.
If you want more rapid reporting or written reports training consider the dedicated Grasycale Written and/or Rapid Reporting Grayscale Courses.
We start slowly and address common problems in case presentation. We ramp up the speed till you are seeing multiple cases quickly. We will interject with minor comparisons of situations that seem similar to reinforce points. We will talk through a few short summary topics that cause confusion. At the end of the course we finish off with a rapid fire session where we just try to ram your mental database with as many great cases as time permits. We are flexible and we can somewhat adapt to needs. There is no shortage of cases!
The cases you will see will be tough, but are all fair exam cases. Simply, you would not get these tough cases "back to back to back" in the exam. Why do we focus on these? Well because these films are critical in the exam. You can course along on easier material and then one tough case and your confidence erodes and your exam success ebbs away. Nail that hard case and the opposite happens, you are confident, your scores increase and above all the examiner starts to relax that he or she is with a candidate that will pass. Go to other courses to see the routine films again and again, Iwe will show you the stuff they cannot and that you will likely have not seen.
The course is constantly evolving and the exciting three faculty members taking over the reigns from Dr Vlahos are no excpetion. We truly believe, supported by the feedback to date that the course is the best you may attend. But that does not suffice. The structure will continue to evolve in an attempt to continue to maximise the benefit for attendees.
The 2 day portion of the course remains exclusively focused on passing the viva portion of the examination with some cases that can be used for long case written reports too. This is a comprehensive instruction to assist you in evaluating unknown or difficult cases in a rational way, constructing pertinent or combined differentials. But it is not enough to simply make the diagnosis. You must milk that case for everything it is worth and present it in a way that is clinically pertinent and distinguishes you from other candidates. You need to aim for a 7-8 on cases you know, not a 6!
The course still conveys this information in many different engaging ways, single cases, multiple case, mini-vivas, collections of related cases, micro-summaries/lectures, rapid fire techniques and many more themed groups of cases. This drives home the material and its mimics. We are always trying to highlight your strengths but probing to evaluate and improve your weaknesses.
But prior to the course we want to get to know you better and help you. You are paying for a weekend course. But this stuff is some bonus stuff we do for trainees. A few weeks before the course we start sending out individual cases, stacks of images of a case or select images. We ask specific "examiner" questions. You can answer and every few days we guide or reply by email. Maybe more images on the same cases follow. You elect whether you want to participate or not. If you do, you are getting personalised feedback on interpretation and analysis and we get advanced knowledge of your areas of strength and weakness. If you don’t respond because you are shy, that’s okay too. You get the answers and teaching points regardless.
Everyone is increasingly worried about the rapid reporting. Mostly because the quality of “packs” available is variable and so indeed is the exam. How do you handle this? Well we have a scientific strategic approach to the exam. But we do not want to waste a lot of time on the rapid reporting. So we do this pre-course. We send you detailed radiological approaches and strategy for dealing with this section. You get three practice packs before the course.
After the course, we are usually in pre-exam mode but we are still here for advice and send out some special observation training cases.
If you want more rapid reporting or written reports training consider the dedicated Grasycale Written and/or Rapid Reporting Grayscale Courses.
