A Guide to Surviving Exams

For many people, the exam period is one of the most stressful times of the year. There are high stakes with the possibility of having to retake the exam or repeat the year if you don’t pass. It is natural to feel stressed or overwhelmed. However, becoming too stressed can be detrimental to both your revision and the rest of your life, so it is important to manage your stress and continue to enjoy life around revision. I have compiled a mix of practical exam tips and general self care advice to support you through exams and get the most out of your hard work. 

The foundations

Food

• As medical students, we know that food is important as energy for our brains. However, healthy eating and nutritious meals often go out the window as exams draw closer. 

• A good diet has been linked to better memory and better emotion regulation [1].

• It is worth the time and effort it takes to cook a nutritious meal, as this will be helping your brain to take in your revision content!

• For meal ideas, see Mind Health’s Recipe Guide:  https://www.mindhealthuk.org/recipe-guide

Water

• Hydration is incredibly important for brain function! Even low levels of dehydration can affect brain functioning and mood [2].

• Carrying a reusable water bottle with you and having it on your desk while you study can help remind you to sip it throughout the day to stay hydrated.

Exercise

• While it can be very easy to miss your normal exercise class or gym session to fit in an extra hour of revision, physical activity improves cognitive function, reduces stress and improves mood [3, 4].

• Therefore, it is important to still take time to exercise to manage your stress and make your revision sessions as productive as they can be.

Sleep

• We all know those people that pull all-nighters before exams. If you are one of them- good for you! However, most of us need a good night's sleep to properly retain and process information.

• Getting enough sleep has been shown to improve understanding of study materials and help with taking tests [5].

• Prioritising sleep during the revision period and the night before your exam will help to ensure you can properly engage in revision and retain the information you learn.

Advice for managing stress

• Take regular breaks. Your brain needs time to process knowledge, and it can’t do this if you’re constantly cramming in more information. You will feel more refreshed after a break and ready to learn more content!

• Get outside. It’s important to remind yourself that the outside world still exists even when you’re stuck inside revising all day. Spending time in green spaces, such as parks or woodlands, has positive associations with mental health [6]. If you can, take revision breaks in green spaces for extra benefit.

• Learn what self-care looks like for you. Different people have different ways of looking after themselves during stressful periods. Don’t feel pressure to keep up with what other people are doing. See Mind Health’s blog on Self Care for Busy Medical Students for ideas: https://www.mindhealthuk.org/post/self-care-strategies-for-busy-medical-student .

•  Make time for things you enjoy. It can be very tempting to spend every spare moment you have studying, but it’s important to keep your quality of life and remind yourself that there’s more to life than medicine. Ensuring you make time for things you enjoy will help you to rest and recuperate, giving you more energy for when you go back to studying.

• Give yourself treats for revising! An afternoon iced coffee can give you motivation as well as more energy.

• Sticker charts! (Aka positive reinforcement.) For my fourth year exams I created a sticker chart and told myself that if I made it to the library by 8am every day for two weeks, I would buy myself something special as a reward. It was the thought of my reward that got me to the library every day. It also gives you something to look forward to while you revise!

• Work with yourself, rather than against yourself. If you know that you work best in the evenings, embrace this and set up your schedule around what works for you. Plan to learn the hardest topics when you know you’ll have the best concentration, rather than leaving them until the end of the day when you’ll crash.

General exam tips

• Active recall. Spaced repetition and active recall have been shown to be the best study methods for retaining information [7]. Using techniques such as mind maps, flash cards and testing yourself will help you to remember the information long term.  

• Be organised. Create a revision plan or timetable to make sure you can cover all the content. It will also help you feel less stressed as you have a plan for covering everything. 

• Use different sources of information. Going over lecture notes is essential, but it can also be very helpful to use youtube videos or textbooks to aid your learning. 

•  Start revising early, even if it feels too soon you will retain more information than you think.

• The hardest part is often just starting. Once you’ve done some revision, even just 10 minutes, it makes it so much easier to continue and keep going.

• Take a deep breath. Going into an exam hall often amplifies the stress which can stop you thinking clearly. Before starting the exam, and any time you need it during the exam, pause for a moment to take a deep breath and calm your racing thoughts.  

Surviving OSCEs

• Practice, practice, practice! Practice with friends if you can. You can often learn good tips and tricks by seeing how your colleagues do exams. Practice with patients on the ward. Even if you’re on a respiratory ward, it doesn’t mean you can’t practice a GI examination if the patients are willing!

• Start early and practice consistently. It can be helpful to create a schedule so you know you can cover all the OSCE stations well before the exam. Revising OSCE stations early can also help you nail examinations during placement. 

• Wear clothes that make you feel good! You will feel much more confident if you turn up to the exam knowing you look the part. (Make sure you still check your university's dress code for OSCES!) 

•  Remember that you don’t need perfect marks to pass. It’s okay if you forget a couple of points of the history or clinical skill. The examiners are making sure you are a safe doctor, not a perfect one.

• NEVER make up findings. If you can’t feel a pulse, be honest. It’s far better to admit that you can’t feel a pulse where there may be one, than to say you can feel a pulse where you shouldn’t be able to. The examiner will have examined the patient first so they know exactly what you should or shouldn’t be able to find.

• Manners will get you far. There are often easy marks for introducing yourself and having a good bedside manner. Make sure that no matter how stressed you get, you always stay polite and courteous to the patient and examiner.

• This tip might be one of the more crazy ones, but please have an open mind! Before my final OSCEs, I practiced all of the examinations on my stuffed teddy. While it felt a bit weird to talk out loud to my teddy, I found it super helpful to have a non-judgemental space where I could go over parts of examinations that I found hard over and over again and not worry about a friend getting bored. Obviously, this is less helpful in learning specific examination signs or findings, but it is great for memorising the order of full examinations and for building your confidence.

Final Thoughts

During one of my surgical rotations, an anaesthetist and the ODP were talking about the number of exams throughout medical school, and the ODP asked the anaesthetist how she coped. She replied that it gets to the point where you can’t let exams derail your life, otherwise you’ll spend more of your time in the exam trenches than you will actually enjoying life. It’s one thing to pull all-nighters or spend 16 hours in the library during university exams, but this may not be possible (or at all healthy) down the line when you may have a family and are doing a full time job whilst preparing specialty exams. Unfortunately, Medicine is one of those careers where there is almost always another exam around the corner all the way from before medical school, to getting into core training and passing specialty training. It is so much more beneficial in the long run to figure out how revision works for you around the rest of your life, rather than exams taking over everything else in your life.

I hope this guide has given you some ideas for managing exam stress and you feel more confident about surviving exams. It takes an enormous amount of work to get into medical school so you have already proved that you are intelligent and dedicated enough to pass the exams. Keep persevering and you will succeed. 

References

1. Ekstrand B, Scheers N, Rasmussen MK, Young JF, Ross AB, Landberg R. Brain foods - the role of diet in brain performance and health. Nutrition Reviews. 2021;79(6):693-708.

2. Young HA, Cousins A, Johnston S, Fletcher JM, Benton D. Autonomic adaptations mediate the effect of hydration on brain functioning and mood: Evidence from two randomized controlled trials. Scientific Reports. 2019;9(1):16412.

3. Erickson KI, Hillman CH, Kramer AF. Physical activity, brain, and cognition. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. 2015;4:27-32.

4. Hamer M, Endrighi R, Poole L. Physical Activity, Stress Reduction, and Mood: Insight into Immunological Mechanisms. In: Yan Q, editor. Psychoneuroimmunology: Methods and Protocols. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press; 2012. p. 89-102.

5. Gillen-O’Neel C, Huynh VW, Fuligni AJ. To Study or to Sleep? The Academic Costs of Extra Studying at the Expense of Sleep. Child Development. 2013;84(1):133-42.

6. Callaghan A, McCombe G, Harrold A, McMeel C, Mills G, Moore-Cherry N, et al. The impact of green spaces on mental health in urban settings: a scoping review. Journal of Mental Health. 2021;30(2):179-93.

7. Jayaram S. Spaced repetition and active recall improves academic performance among pharmacy students. Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning. 2026;18(2):102510.