what does it mean to be a doctor well i'm only in my first year of medical school so honestly i don't really know yet but if i had to take my best guess at it i would think it's more than just memorizing facts and symptoms and diseases and not just giving out prescription after prescription after prescription i think being a doctor is a lot about listening not just listening but actually hearing what the person is saying so that you can feel what they're feeling and see what they're seeing and hopefully help someone who might be sick hurt and in a lot of pain now more than ever medical schools are more interested in the humanity side of medicine and that's exactly why casper is so so important what's up everyone my name is eric and i'm a first year canadian medical school student here in canada today i'm going to be giving you some general tips and tricks about how to do well on casper without going into too many specific situations in a second i'll talk about why i think i'm qualified to give you some half decent advice when it comes to casper firstly what is casper casper stands for computer-based assessment for sampling personal characteristics it's 90 minutes long and made of 12 different stations these stations will give you a short video prompt or a text prompt showing you an ethical situation and asking what you would do either way you got five minutes to type out a response that response is then sent to real people for marking and then from there it's out of your hands essentially casper is an hour long test on who you are and that's why different schools require you to complete casper beyond your grades and test scores professional schools really care about who you are and the people skills that you bring specifically casper is looking at your skills in communication collaboration empathy equity ethics professionalism motivation problem solving resiliency and self-awareness now that probably seems like a lot to take in and even more so to convey through a short written text response but let me show you how you can best get your point across in the quickest amount of time before i do that i just want to tell you why i think i'm qualified to be giving you this advice in the first place so casper doesn't release your score to you so you don't know exactly how well you did but you can get a ballpark for how well you did within a range two medical schools in canada specifically put a lot of emphasis on casper and i was lucky enough to receive an interview at both of them so with that in mind i think it's safe to say that i did relatively well in my casper and then any advice i give to you will be coming from a good place now without any further ado let's get into the tips we all have our own biases and beliefs when it comes to how the world works and how the people in that world are and usually that's pretty helpful for making quick day-to-day decisions in our everyday lives but that can get us in trouble times are changing the world and the people within it are not so easily categorized everyone is unique and brings with them a breath of experiences that's different from yours but doesn't make it any less important just as how we should try to minimize placing people into stereotypes in our everyday lives we should try to avoid that with casper as well one piece of advice i would give to you is to keep an open mind don't let who you are and how your belief system has shaped your view of the world cloud how you view someone else don't go into a situation thinking you have all the facts and everything you need to know to solve the problem oftentimes it's actually the opposite we don't have all the information we don't know exactly what's going wrong and there's a lot behind the scenes that we aren't aware about we need to make sure that we're not bringing our assumptions into this and thinking that this person is just another clear-cut case so coming into the exam try to have a clear and open mind don't let your biases cloud your judgment and especially don't let them cloud your observation just because someone might fit into a category that you see doesn't mean that's exactly who they are how they're feeling and what they represent taken the facts not your own beliefs for example a really stereotypical and often cloudy discussion in medicine is whether or not doctors should have tattoos some see that as unprofessional whereas others see that as completely fine so either way you swing on that argument don't let your belief just cloud your judgment and prevent you from seeing someone else's perspective and what they might think of the situation as well all in all when you sit down to take that test make sure you leave your assumptions at the door the situations in casper often don't have a right or wrong black or white answer it's not that simple ethical situations never are there is no one right answer ethical situations are just that a discussion on a situation that is really rooted in ethics is it right to do this should i be doing this what are the consequences there's a whole lot of discussion that needs to take place and it's really hard to get that in a few minutes so by definition ethical questions don't really have a right answer and a lot of the time that's not really what they're looking for they want to see that you can appreciate all the different perspectives and try to liaise that into a comprehensive solution that makes everyone at least a little bit happy and to do that you need to be able to consider all the perspectives who is it what do they want what's stopping them from getting what they want and how can i best help them while still making sure that i do the exact same for everybody else it's a difficult task but it starts with considering all the possibilities now typing speed i have a lot to say about typing speed because it is one of the most important parts of doing well on casper imagine this you have so many great thoughts and ideas about how you should answer this prompt and as soon as it starts you see the timer start to count down slowly and slowly time starts to run out and you're typing frantically to try to get everything down but then the timer runs out and you're left wishing that you could have just typed a little bit faster to get all these great points down you can see why typing quickly is so important especially continuing off the point talking about giving different perspectives you don't want to be giving a really detailed analysis of one perspective how someone might be feeling why they're doing this how they've tried to help themselves but then completely neglect someone else and not give the other side of the coin you want to be able to have enough time to be able to give all perspectives and that starts with typing quickly a great website that i used to practice my typing was called 10fastfingers.com the website basically gives you one minute to type as many unrelated words as you can and then tells you how quickly you type those words personally i averaged about 100 to 110 words per minute but ideally you want to get that number as high as possible and the higher you get it the better the good news is that typing is something that you can pick up pretty quickly and it's really accessible so long as you have some free time and a keyboard one thing i did during my practice was to whenever i had a break just go to that website and literally spend one minute just typing out these words as quickly as i could and i saw a lot of improvement really quickly it's going to sound super nerdy but it was honestly really fun like trying to beat my high score and improve and it was like a game to me honestly another great thing is that when you're writing the casper grammar and spelling don't count at all the test makers understand that you're under a time crunch to give a comprehensive and holistic answer so they're not really focused on whether or not you can use a semicolon correctly so don't worry about formatting your responses perfectly or making sure that every single word is spelled properly but do try to make your responses clear and easy to understand type in straightforward wording make sure that anyone reading your responses would understand it and then they'll be able to relay it back to you when i was practicing for casper i asked some operators for help and just go through a mock situation with me what really stood out to me was that when we answered the exact same prompt with the exact same questions our answers were so different sure we were saying the same thing in essence but the way you say it is so important what what my friend's answer really showed was that he was compassionate and that he really cared of course i thought i was compassionate and i cared too but my wording and my response just wasn't showing that as well to give you an example let's say the question prompt said that your friend is starting to feel a little bit uncomfortable at a party and you notice what would you do a good starting place might be i would take them aside and talk with them but another way to make that answer just a little bit better would be i would bring her aside so that she would feel comfortable sharing her thoughts with me so that i could get a better grasp of what she's going through both of these are saying the exact same thing giving someone a private space to talk but one of them is clearly showing your compassion and your humanity a lot better instead of taking someone to a private location you want to bring them somewhere that makes them comfortable it's assumed that it's probably also going to be private but it just adds another layer to your answer likewise talking with someone isn't the same as trying to actively improve your understanding of the situation these sentences have the exact same meaning but it's all about the delivery now why is that important to relate it to the real world talking to patients will be so much easier when you come off as caring and understanding they'll be more receptive to you and they'll be more comfortable speaking to you again it's not enough to just care about the situation but it's so important to be able to convey that you care to the person listening one really easy way you can improve your wording is to follow these steps describe your thoughts your feelings as well as what you can see and what you can hear continuing with the example of bringing someone to a private place to talk i think a good way to preface that would be i think she's not doing well right now i'm kind of worried about her she hasn't been herself and she hasn't been as talkative as she normally is giving this kind of quick description invites the person reading your answer into your head you're giving them a clear picture of what you're feeling and really isn't that what casper is about the more you convey the better off you'll be if you just follow these three simple steps you'll be a lot better off again if we relate this back to the real world observational skills are important in all aspects of life but especially in healthcare and that's multifaceted too when you're interacting with the patient you're watching out for what they're saying how they're feeling how comfortable they are all while trying to make a diagnosis then when you're communicating with your healthcare team you have to be able to clearly and efficiently describe your findings to them to make sure that everyone else is on the same page one of the most valuable things that i did when practicing for casper was work with a small group of individuals we would work on a practice question and then talk about how we answered the questions but also why we answered them the way we did my girlfriend and i practiced together and for context she's a way better people person than i am so i learned a lot from her i was usually pretty straight to the point and matter of fact but she was a lot more in touch with the emotions at play and just how to get a better reading of the picture as a whole among many many other lessons we all have important things to bring to the table but it's impossible that we can bring them all ourselves we have to rely on other people to show us the perspectives that we're missing by practicing together we were really able to learn a lot from each other that we wouldn't have thought of ourselves about the same situation and like i said earlier the more perspectives you get the better off your answer will be now i want to give you three tips for forming your group to make sure that it's as good as possible and will help you the most firstly try to keep your group size to a manageable and reasonable amount that you can still work well together i know everyone has had that massive group where you end up just kind of hanging out and no work gets done personally i would recommend three to four people when you're looking for a casper group secondly try to find people that have opinions that are different from your own the beauty of discussion is that you can learn from others if everyone in your group has the same opinion you're not only not learning anything from others but you're also being reassured that the way you guys are talking about is the only way and they'll stop you from really considering all the perspectives that are at play lastly branch out of your friend group a lot of us tend to be friends with people we're really similar to but that might not always be the most helpful for us look at opportunities for practice offered by your school or in the community try to get creative with it since we're all online now it might be easier to schedule video calls where you can get online and practice together too i hope that after watching this video you feel way more prepared for your casper and you're ready to use some of these tips when you start practicing some good news is it's not nearly as long as the mcat and for me it was really enjoyable so try to have some fun with it if you like this video check out this playlist where i have more videos on how to get into medical school i hope you've enjoyed and like usual that's been your daily dose of medi son and i'll see you in the next video