Prescribing a Variable Rate Insulin Infusion for a Nil-by-Mouth Surgical Patient
A timed 10-minute prescription writing 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.
Prescription writing10 min12 checklist items
- Station type
- Prescription writing
- Time
- 10 minutes, after 60s reading
- Total marks
- 23
- Critical items
- 5 (missing one fails the station)
Candidate instructions
Setting: You are a Foundation Year 1 doctor on the surgical ward at a district general hospital. You are reviewing Mr. John Smith, a 60-year-old man with type 2 diabetes, who is nil by mouth (NPO) for surgery tomorrow morning. He has been prescribed a variable rate intravenous insulin infusion with a substrate fluid. Your task is to write the prescription for the insulin infusion and the substrate fluid on the appropriate chart. You also need to state your monitoring plan. You have 10 minutes. Do not ask any questions; all necessary information has been provided.
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, 12 weighted items worth 23 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.
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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
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Educational content for students and clinicians in training. It does not replace professional judgement, local protocols or current prescribing information.