As prepared by Chris Nickson, here are the practice written questions from a recent CICM Second Part exam practice session at The Alfred ICU, with recommended reading from LITFL.com Critical Care Compendium and other FOAM sources:
Q1.
You are referred a critically ill patient who has methaemoglobinaemia.
- List 6 possible causes (20%)
- What are the clinical features of methaemoglobinaemia? (20%)
- Outline your approach to management (60%)
Q2.
Compare cerebral salt wasting (CSW) and syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion (SIADH). (100%)
https://litfl.com/siadh-versus-cerebral-salt-wasting/
https://litfl.com/cerebral-salt-wasting/
Q3.
Regarding clinical trials in critical care:
- What are confounders in clinical trials? (20%)
- How can confounding be dealt with when conducting clinical trials? (40%)
- The ARDSNet ARMA trial established protective lung ventilation as a standard of practice, but may have been affected by “practice misalignment”. Explain what this means. (20%)
- Critical care trials are commonly underpowered due to insufficient sample size. Why is this? (20%)
https://litfl.com/confounding-and-confounders/
https://litfl.com/power-and-sample-size/
https://litfl.com/practice-misalignment/
You can access an extensive set of past practice questions dating back to 2014 here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_Ta8IvVaVtc5Il7-kJwj6qKGu54OmifJGRUWCXud8dY/
See this link on INTENSIVE for exam resources: https://intensiveblog.com/resources/#3