Start torturing your trainee in style with this multiple-choice questionnaire.
If you’re a training practice then congratulations: your new registrar will start this week.
Why not give them Professor Candid’s MCQ to see where they’re at!
1. This is a picture of a stethoscope. But what is a stethoscope?
![](https://d1svk58pjf7hyt.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2025/01/29114913/Picture-1343556677.png)
A. The stethoscope was invented in the 1860s by the rather sensitive Frenchman Renee Laennec. He made it to avoid putting his ear on a female patient’s chest while listening to her heartbeat.
B. It’s a device used to detect soft blowing grade 1 systolic murmurs and the faint leathery creak of a pleural rub.
C. It’s a piece of theatre that makes you look good even though you don’t have a clue what you’re doing. Yes, you put that end in your ears, idiot!
2. This is a picture of your practice nurse.
![](https://d1svk58pjf7hyt.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2025/01/29114939/image-716x716.png)
Is she:
A. Your subordinate
B. Your friend
C. More than a friend. She’ll teach you everything you need to know about vaccines and minor surgical procedures and she’ll “spill the tea” on all your colleagues and patients. In fact she’s a walking, talking Reddit.
3. It’s your first day at the practice and there is only one “reserved for doctors” space left in the car park. Do you:
A. Back your white 2025 c-class Mercedes into the spot while playing 1980s techno classic Pump up the Jam through your speakers.
B. Better leave it empty for one of the “proper” doctors to use.
C. Ask the practice nurse if it’s OK to park there.
4. A worried mum brings her six-month-old daughter in with a small lump on her scalp.
![](https://d1svk58pjf7hyt.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2025/01/29115027/image-1.png)
Do you diagnose:
A. A lump
B. A dermoid cyst
C. Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, worrying the hell out of everybody including yourself
5. A patient attends for a repeat prescription of amlodipine. Do you
A) Prescribe amlodipine
B) Check their BP, make sure their bloods are up to date and then prescribe amlodipine
C) Read the notes and open up a can of worms by talking about their social history – 45 minutes later and you’ll regret you ever mentioned it. Note to self, just prescribe the amlodipine!
6. You notice a DNA on your appointment list. Do you:
A. Celebrate and get yourself a coffee
B. Fill the spare seconds speed-reading guidelines and answering MCQs like this one
C. Worry that there is a needy patient somewhere in the world who really needs a doctor and can’t be seen
7. The psychiatry debacle in NSW
A. Fills you with foreboding because you know only too well that the community mental health teams will dump all that extra work on GPs
B. Makes you feel confident that your political and medical superiors will sort it all out
C. Underscores yet again how incompatible the worlds of politics and medicine actually are. Even the practice nurse could tell you that!
8. This is a picture of your trainer.
![](https://d1svk58pjf7hyt.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2025/01/29115103/image-2-716x716.png)
Do you call her:
A. By her first name
B. By her surname
C. “That nice lady doctor” because you know it really winds her up
If you answered mainly C’s, congratulations: you’re an arsehole!