Counselling a Patient Starting Metformin: How to Take, Side Effects, Sick-Day Rules and Monitoring
A timed 10-minute counselling OSCE station with reading time, a warning bell and an examiner-style weighted checklist including critical items, marked the way a real examiner would mark it.
Counselling10 min15 checklist items
- Station type
- Counselling
- Time
- 10 minutes, after 60s reading
- Total marks
- 26
- Critical items
- 3 (missing one fails the station)
Candidate instructions
You are a foundation doctor in a GP practice. A 52-year-old man has been newly prescribed metformin for type 2 diabetes. Your task is to counsel him about his new medicine. Address all aspects: how to take it, common side effects, sick-day rules, and monitoring. You have 10 minutes. You may ask questions to confirm understanding.
How the station runs
- 60 seconds of reading time with the instructions above, and nothing else.
- 10 minutes on the clock, with a warning bell before the end.
- The examiner's checklist, 15 weighted items worth 26 marks, revealed only when the station ends.
- Your score, with a critical-fail flag if a safety-critical item was missed.
The checklist stays hidden until the station is over, exactly as it would outside the exam room.
Log in to run "Counselling a Patient Starting Metformin: How to Take, Side Effects, Sick-Day Rules and Monitoring"
A free account starts the clock: reading time, the station itself with a warning bell, then the examiner's checklist and your score.
Taught in
More like this
- Explaining a New Diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes and Addressing Fears of Insulin
- Diabetic Foot Examination and Risk Stratification
- Prescribing case: Newly Diagnosed Type 2 Diabetes: Initiating First-line Therapy
- Clinical case: Diabetes Ketoacidosis in a Young Adult with Type 1 Diabetes
- Counselling a Patient Starting Ramipril for Hypertension
- Counselling a Patient Starting Sertraline for Depression
Educational content for students and clinicians in training. It does not replace professional judgement, local protocols or current prescribing information.