It can be extremely disheartening to find out that the clinical or practical assessment or examination you have prepared for has not returned the results that you had hoped for, or worse, resulted in a fail. However, exam setbacks are a great opportunity for growth and learning – both as a student but as a human being as well.
Some of the greatest optometrists (and for that matter, other professionals) have failed at least one examination or assessment in their time and often these exam setbacks are part of the learning process. As someone who has assessed a number of these examinations; through first year undergraduate assessments to post-qualification accreditations, it is often disheartening for the assessor seeing someone who has shown capability and promise throughout their learning to not quite make the mark on the day of an examination.
This article looks at 10 strategies for dealing with exam setbacks to help keep you on track for the passing the next attempt with flying colours!
1) Embrace Positivity Despite Exam Setbacks
It can be very easy to become despondent following exam setbacks. Given that most healthcare professions require a high-level of A-level results, this can result in the students within the role having high educational expectations of themselves and anything less than perfect is deemed awful. University standards are different to that of A-Levels and often a great piece of work will result in a mark of 60-70% (a far cry from the expected 95-100% considered good at school!). Please remember this if your results come in lower than you would expect!
I have chosen this point as the first because I feel it is the most important. Keeping positive and keeping an objective look at your end goals will be the first hurdle to overcome in the face of a bad result and will be the hurdle that will help you persist.
As mentioned above, you needed good grades to be here and you had to beat others to be offered a place over other applicants – the university know you are capable and they have every faith that you can pass. Remind yourself why you chose optometry and this will help keep you on the right track!
2) Build Resilience
You only become resilient by overcoming obstacles in your path. Any exam setbacks are lessons that build your resilience for future challenges. It might seem bad that you failed an assessment in first year, but imagine if you are facing a clinical complaint when you’ve qualified. Using the lessons from your exam setbacks here will help you tackle future issues!
3) Set Realistic Expectations
As mentioned above, grades in the 90-100% region at university is tough, even for the most gifted of students. The topic of optometry is much bigger than any of the given modules – and given its specialist area, it would be impossible to know absolutely everything about a given area (even qualified optometrists would struggle to achieve perfection in an exam or piece of coursework). Be realistic in your expectation from any given exam/assessment and use any feedback to build upon those weaker areas!
4) Maintain Perspective During Exam Setbacks
Being an optometrist is much more than one particular exam technique. Score badly in the first year examination involving a direct ophthalmoscope? Whilst it feels bad, you have another 3 years of training that will hone that skill ahead of you. Not 100% confident on the muscle pairings during motility? You’d be surprised how many qualified optometrists still need to consult their notes or textbooks to confirm them in the real world.
Remember, you have a lot of training ahead of you to perfect these techniques (especially in third year and pre-registration) – these techniques will be built upon each time you use them – so if it is “just a passing mark” and it’s a technique you’ve only ever had a few hours to train with – don’t worry – you will develop that skill to perfection as you progress through your studies.
5) Seek Support
There is nothing wrong in asking for help. Or advice. Or guidance. Or feedback. It can be from friends, family, colleagues, peers or your supervisors. If there is anything you would find useful in your development – it won’t harm to ask! This doesn’t just apply to clinical techniques or exam setbacks either. Seek support in any aspect of your life should you ever need it! Nobody will think less of you!
6) Reflect on Exam Setbacks Objectively
Failure or poor performance is, understandably, linked with negative emotions of sadness, disappointment and occasionally some anger or frustration. Allow time to process the emotion – this is an important step in processing the result, but once this has passed, take a step back and assess your performance objectively.
Hopefully, you’ll have some feedback to use at this point, but breaking down the performance can help you see where you have gone wrong. You will acknowledge areas that you performed well in and identify where things went wrong.
It could be one mistake caused the rest of the exam to go poorly, such as recording a plus as a minus or using the wrong calculation when working out a good starting contact lens specification.
Identifying these moments will prevent the same mistake happening again and increase your chances of acing the exam next time!
It is also important to point out that your examiners are not deliberately trying to catch you out or see you do poorly. Whilst frustration is something that can lead to heated emotions, cornering your examiner in a clinic at a later date demanding to know why you have failed or being accused of marking too harshly is not going to do you favours going forward and this will be deemed as inappropriate and unprofessional behaviour. Remember, they are marking to a set assessment criteria and also know the role better than you do at this stage. They need to make sure that you are professional and safe in your role – if you fail then you need to look at your own performance and not that of the assessor.
7) Utilise Resources
If you are reading this then congratulations, you are already following this point! There are so many resources out there that you can use to help build your knowledge and competence.
Textbooks, lecture notes, journal articles, CPD articles, specialist interest magazines, your tutor, your lecturer, your supervisors, your peers, optometric influencers, online optometry journals, your placement supervisors, optometry forums, optometry social groups, podcasts, optometry YouTube channels… the list goes on. Take the time to read around the subject and utilise all the resources that will give you the best chance of understanding the topic at hand. Remember, you are a university student and not in sixth-form – you need to be proactive in your learning and development. If you care enough about the end goal, you will do what you must to get there!
8) Exam Setbacks Identify Weaknesses – Focus on Them!
This follows on from your reflective practice. Work out what you are weaker at and draw more energy and resources into getting that area understood. The weak areas are what causes you to fail your examinations and exam setbacks can help you identify these week areas.
Optometry is a subject where your skills compound upon one another. When you know something well you build upon it.
Building upon it helps solidify that knowledge or skill. If you are weak in a given area, it means the knowledge that follows will also be more difficult to understand or perform, holding you back. Give yourself that extra time to work on your weak areas and you will soon realise that they become part of your strengths!
9) Understand the Format
Most practical examinations follow a set format. Your lecturers and supervisors will likely run through the format of the exam multiple times in the weeks leading up to the assessment to allow you to become familiar. Learn this assessment as it will make performing it much easier.
If it is, for instance, an OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination), you typically will be given a short amount of time to read the scenario of the examination followed by (typically) five minutes to perform the practical clinical examination described on the scenario. Look for key words (“explain”, “perform”, “discuss” or “interpret”) to understand what is expected of you in the assessment.
If it is a sign-off examination for a given technique (such as Goldmann Applanation Tonometry or Volk), remember that you will have a patient that you will need to manage in addition to the exam technique. Therefore do as you would if you were seeing this patient in a real testing room for an eye examination. Things such as hygiene, adjusting the slit lamp accordingly, communication skills and seeking consent will all be assessed in addition to the technique itself. Don’t just think it will be one aspect without checking and, if in doubt, always simulate a real world scenario – just in case. Often the fails in these cases are the ones that don’t communicate with their patient or act in unprofessional ways, as opposed to minor mistakes on the technique itself!
10) Do EVERYTHING in Your Power to Prepare for the Re-sit!
Having to re-sit an exam can be demoralising and the added pressure you have to pass the exam can be crushing too. With the stakes much higher in this second attempt, do everything you are able to prepare to pass this time.
You have already started off well by reading this article to the end and the tips here will be invaluable for your preparations. Take time to find mock exam questions or scenarios, think of potential questions the examiners may ask you and prepare model answers to them and utilise any clinical time that your supervisors or lecturers set aside for these practical sessions. Set timers to “speed-run” a performance to ensure you are able to answer or perform to time and ask for feedback from anyone you are able regarding your performance.
Remember: “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail”
I wish you all the best of luck in any exam re-sits that you may have ahead of you and I hope that this time it is a positive outcome. If you have taken the time to read this, I am sure you are committed to success and I look forward to hearing positive news! Do you have any further tips on how to overcome exam setbacks? Discuss them in the comment section below!
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If part of your failed exam involved taking a case scenario, please consider out Study Guide: History and Symptoms: The Eye Examination. This guide, available for £16.99 on Amazon, looks at the importance of taking a case history, what to include and a collection of 20 scripts to help you develop your skills in taking case histories. Check it out now!
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