Rajiv Hanspal
Professor Rajiv Hanspal
Professor Rajiv Hanspal grew up in Calcutta where he attended St Xavier’s School and The Medical College, Bengal, Calcutta, before coming to the UK in 1975. A fellow at the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Physicians, Professor Hanspal worked as an orthopaedic surgeon before becoming a consultant physician in rehabilitation medicine. Here he describes the difficulties he had in adapting to UK examination systems.
Photo: Professor Hanspal (bottom row far left) is pictured with his childhood friends
Transcript
Rajiv Hanspal adapting to MCQ exams
In anatomy our, our standard text book for anatomy was Gray’s Anatomy, which is only a reference book in the UK. And I, some things I knew in so much detail that actually worked against me, when I came to the UK because we never did MCQs and MCQs want an answer which is a common-sense answer, multiple choice questions. Primary Fellowship is all multiple choice. So I knew that the uterine artery goes above the other, 2cm above the pelvic floor.
And the question is whether the ureter or the uterine artery goes above the other at the pelvic floor. Now as far as a common sense answer is concerned yes the artery is above, it does, but I said no, no actually it’s actually one and a half centimetres above, which is irrelevant in, you know, these fine points, irrelevant in practice, but it wasn’t for me. So I’d get the answers wrong.
