[Music] what's up guys welcome back to my channel my name is rachel i'm a pre-med and biomedical science student and today i'm going to be telling you how to score in the fourth quartile for the cafeteria exam chapter is a situational based ethics type of judgment test that is required by some medical schools in addition to your primary and secondary application make sure you're checking to see if the schools that you're applying to require casper or preview as for being a situational judgment test a lot of people say that you can't really study for an ethics test or situational test i definitely don't believe you should study hardcore for a type of test like this but i do believe that there are ways that you can prepare yourself so that you can get the best outcome that you can on test day the first and most important thing you need to know is the format of the exam 2022 casper requires both a typed and a video response section there are 15 sections of the casper in total nine of these being typed and six of these being video the nine type sections are split into three type scenarios and six video scenarios while the six video scenarios are split into two text-based scenarios and four video based scenarios in total the casper takes 100 to 120 minutes and there are two breaks in between the best way to be familiarized with the formatting is to do the actual practice test the company that runs casper alto suite has a sample test on their website that runs exactly like the actual casper i highly suggest that you do this a couple days out from test day so that you know exactly the format of the exam and you can eliminate any unknowns you're allowed one piece of blank paper so that you can write down any notes while the scenarios are presented another thing that really helped me was to get outside practice there are a lot of third-party casper practice exams but since casper is more on the subjective ethics side the scoring and the rationale behind these might not be as representative as the actual casper exam which is why i didn't use third party exams and defaulted more to using youtube videos and youtube video scenarios when watching these it's super important to note that the people creating these videos have tons of time and they're not under the five minute typed pressure of having to type as fast as they can to create these video scenarios don't be alarmed if you hear these amazing wonderfully well thought out paragraphs that are presented because under time constraints this isn't feasible and testing these are more so examples for you to gain more exposure with different scenarios and learn from the reasoning behind them one thing that i found super super helpful in contributing to my casper exam day success was creating a comprehensive centralized document where i listed out all the scenarios that i encountered their responses and what i thought about these scenarios and how they responded this was useful because they gave me a centralized document i could refer to and review the day before test day it also helped for me to collect my thoughts and work out my thinking process through looking at different examples doesn't have to be a super fancy well-formatted official document at all just something that you can use as a record of certain example scenarios that you do want to keep mind of because there are certain types of categories of scenarios that do pop up frequently on casper so if you have exposure to those it will definitely help you out on test day you also don't have to write down every situation that you come across just key situations where you felt that someone properly defused the situation or reacted in a manner that you thought was appropriate and sound for the situation given at some point you're going to come across different scenarios that start to sound the same so you don't want to exhaustively go through these as you would practice questions for the mcat for casper there are also lots of videos on youtube out there talking about getting a certain template or having a certain structure at casper scored so that you don't have one score for your entire exam there's going to be a different score for each question theoretically you could potentially copy your same type of template response to each different question and it wouldn't matter however since casper is scored in a quartile manner they're sort of compared up to how other peers and other people who are taking the exam are responding so if so many people are using the same generic response it does sound a little bit disingenuous there are certain buzzwords that i saw pop up a lot during casper prep like pulling a person aside and speaking in a non-confrontational non-judgmental non-biased manner in order to make sure to speak to a person with empathy or active listening and of course these are super important in incorporating but you don't always want to use the same wording so that it sounds robotic you do want a little bit of your personality and how you would respond to a situation to come out in these questions so it sounds more genuine and like you're a person who's actually responding in this situation you don't want it to sound too scripted you of course want to come in with some sort of plan as to how to approach the question you're going to be presented with the scenario and they'll give you like 30 seconds to reflect and then you'll have five minutes to write and answer the question if you're doing the type section and during this 30 seconds of reflection time i found super helpful if you write down the person's name any tidbits about the situation and i just started writing ideas and drawing arrows and such as to how i would answer it given different alternatives after looking through my doc i had a sort of general outline as to how i would respond to it now this isn't saying that i had a sentence i would say the exact sentence in every situation i just had a general mental strategy as to how i would approach a question so that it was more organized and when i'm going and typing or answering in a video format i can be more at ease if i know i have a sort of plan or direction i'm going towards so the first thing i found is super important is gathering information you want to drop somewhere in your casper response that you would first want to gather more information regarding the scenario in any scenario if you're just given a piece of the scenario you don't know the full story it's just like this in real life if we see something happening like a snippet of someone fighting we want to gather more information we want to know more about the situation because we can't just act on the initial impression or jump to conclusions so that's something important that you want to show in your casper response i also found it's super important that you're addressing the issues from both sides if you do only give a one-sided response to the story and you fully explain it and your reasoning and logic behind that you will be able to get some points but you won't get as high the score as if you consider both sides to a story or alternatives it's super important to be open-minded and look for alternative ways to answer a question this is super important not just in casper but in life in general and especially as a career in healthcare or as a physician to be looking at different sides of a matter and how we can address both sides making sure that we're giving the appropriate attention and consideration to both sides of a matter before acting in some scenarios i would have like two charts one with one side and one with the other side and this would help me to better organize my thoughts and see the two different perspectives on an issue of course there aren't always just two sides and there are multifaceted ways that you can approach scenarios but general casper scenarios will give you mostly two sides to consider make sure that you're not basing your answers off of your opinions only because casper is more so testing you on how you're thinking about situations and how you're approaching situations and not your personal opinions certain issues though you may be asked to pick a side or choose one way to handle the situation or another you ultimately want to make sure that you're justifying your choices also on sound reasoning and in a manner that you're being empathetic looking at both sides and considering both sides it may also be helpful to know some ethical principles the four main ethical principles are autonomy beneficence non-maleficence and justice it's important to know these not just for casper but also for any future careers in health care because these are the four key foundational principles to building an ethical and professional work environment and environment for patients some more pointers for casper make sure that you're explaining the reasoning behind some of your actions this shows critical thinking and that you're not really regurgitating a script or a template that you have planned out which essentially sets you apart from other casper test takers remember with casper there's no correct answer so whichever choice that you do pick make sure that you're explaining it fully you'll be fine with whichever way you choose as long as you explain it fully and in a manner that is empathetic and consideration of both sides you want to make sure that you're demonstrating empathy by looking into each person's situation and the considerations and the consequences of choosing different paths in showing empathy you want to make sure that you're prioritizing a patient's privacy by of course pulling them aside and talking to them privately which is honoring a patient's confidentiality i want to make sure that you're giving each person the respect that they're due as human beings and as people that goes into giving people oftentimes the benefit of the doubt another thing i found helpful to incorporate into casper answers is collaboration healthcare in the workplace in general collaboration is super important lots of problems are not solved in a vacuum and you can gain a broad wealth of resources ideas insight knowledge and experience from collaborating with other individuals so why not implement this on the casper if you're stuck on a certain question you can say that you're going to gather more information by reaching out to others and collaborating with others so that you can address the question more fully and with the respect that it deserves the video section of the casper is something that they recently added this year i have a couple of tips for how to approach these one thing you can do to prepare for the video section is to practice being comfortable in front of the camera what i did was opened up my web camera on my computer i practiced making sure that the camera was in the correct position so that they can see my face and i'm looking into the camera and making eye contact with the camera you want to practice being comfortable in the camera and looking into the camera as well as making eye contact because eye contact is super important even though they're not technically grading you on your speaking abilities subconsciously when someone's watching a video and you're making eye contact with them you're making hand gestures it's more conversational and you feel more comfortable they're more likely to get more of an air of empathy and more of a good impression than if you had not since you have to turn on the camera throughout the exam for casper make sure that you're wearing something that's not distracting i wore a business casual outfit of course we're gonna have these implicit impressions if we see someone in business casual versus a distracting t-shirt so make sure that you're dressed appropriately and that your background is clean and not distracting the typing section of casper has long been heralded as more of a typing test rather than an ethics test because it does take a tremendous amount of speed to be able to type out everything you want to say and this is also part of the reason that they introduce the video format to eliminate a fast test typing bias since we still do have the type section one thing you can do to practice for this to practice on typing speed practice websites i personally love nitro type but if you're crunched on time definitely don't worry about it and try your best for both sections as well you want to make sure that you're using all the time allotted to you don't worry if you're stopped in the middle of the sentence uh whether through typing or on a video you look at how the casper scored one pillar of their scoring is effort so if you show that you're putting in your full effort and you're trying to get in every last word and you're constantly thinking of ideas and putting them down this will fare well for you and most likely increase your score make sure that before you start your exam you're taking a deep breath to relax and make sure that you put yourself in the right test taking mindset if you guys found this video helpful or want to see the doc that i used to get a fourth quarter score on the casper make sure to drop comments down below and like comment and subscribe it really helps this channel out and share this casper video knowledge with anyone else who may be taking the casper exam until next time stay happy and healthy and i'll see you guys in the next video bye