After successfully amassing a sizeable and enthusiastic audience on the first seminar, the second seminar of “Learn through our experience PLAB-101" was held by the Career Development Office (CDO) on 7 th April 2022 and was met with an even greater response from the students.

The seminar was presented by four of IMDC’s exceptionally capable alumni which included Dr. Nayab Niazi, Dr. Narmeen Hassan, Dr. Omar Khawar Khokar & Dr. Hassan Naveed. Once all the seats were occupied in just a short period of time by the diligent attendees of IMDC spanning from 1 st year medical students to House Officers, the event was inaugurated by the recitation of The Holy Quran.

After Dr. Hassan had comprehensively explained the importance of English Language Proficiency tests (IELTS/OET) in the first seminar, the main objective of the second seminar was to brief the audience on the core  rerequisites a student must adopt to be able to take the PLAB exam.

This was covered broadly by Dr. Nayab Niazi as she educated the participants with the help of a PowerPoint presentation by first providing the exhaustive details and tips regarding the right time a student should book their PLAB-1 exam and the problems the average student faces in doing so. Secondly, she mentioned the materials she found useful to study from and was immensely generous by donating some of her very fruitful study  aterial to CDO’s office which will continue to guide the students.

Thirdly, she highlighted the cost & study time needed for taking the exam. She ended her discussion by giving a bird’s eye view on the curriculum on which students are tested on in the PLAB-1 exam.

After Dr. Nayab’s informative session, Dr. Narmeen Hassan came to shine light on the PLAB-2 exam, she elaborated that it would be an objectively structured clinical exam and further went on to engage the audience in an interactive question & answer session with the help of a few scenarios she encountered during her own exam. The gist of these scenarios was to enable the participants to acknowledge medical ethics as well as the  mportance of being a safe doctor and to polish their interpersonal skills to be able to clear PLAB-2. Like Dr. Nayab, she also gave an overview of the curriculum included in PLAB-2.

This constructive seminar was concluded with the speakers clearing every query the participants brought forth, which also included the controversial debate of PLAB changing to UKMLA in the upcoming years, which was answered thoroughly and reassuringly by Dr. Omar.

After having all their burning questions answered meticulously by the honorable speakers, the students were given feedback forms to fill by the CDO team and the seminar came to a successful conclusion, where every participant left knowing considerably more about the PLAB exam than they did before.

Saba & Izah (CDO Internees)