How to practise PLAB 2 alone: a spoken rehearsal plan

Start with an attempt, not another hour of notes

Choose one candidate instruction, set an eight-minute timer and begin speaking immediately. Do not write a perfect script first. The first attempt is diagnostic: it reveals where you hesitate, over-explain, miss a cue or lose track of the task.

If you record yourself, use a tool and location you trust, avoid real patient information and delete the recording when it is no longer useful. A simple audio replay is enough; production quality is irrelevant.

Use a five-part solo practice loop

The aim is to create a short feedback loop rather than complete as many cases as possible. One carefully reviewed station can teach more than several rushed read-throughs.

• Read only the candidate instructions and state the task in one sentence.
• Complete the whole station aloud under an eight-minute timer.
• Replay or reconstruct the consultation and mark the exact moments that changed it.
• Choose one behaviour to improve, such as exploring a concern before explaining management.
• Repeat a different scenario that tests the same behaviour in a new context.

Review against three separate questions

For data gathering, ask whether your questions were focused and responsive to the information available. For clinical management, ask whether your explanation and plan addressed the task and included appropriate closure. For interpersonal skills, listen for interruptions, unexplained jargon, missed emotion and whether you checked the patient’s understanding.

Avoid giving yourself a vague score such as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Write evidence: ‘I asked three closed questions after the patient mentioned fear’ is more useful than ‘communication needs work’. Evidence points to a behaviour you can change.

Practise variation without memorising the case

Repeating the identical station until it sounds smooth can create false confidence. You may be learning the sequence rather than improving the underlying consultation skill.

Change the context while keeping the target constant. If the weakness is missing hidden concerns, practise it with a quiet patient, an angry relative and a patient who agrees too quickly. The wording changes; the behaviour you are training stays the same.

Build a week around behaviours

A balanced solo week can include full timed stations, short drills and one review session. Full stations test integration. Short drills isolate an opening, explanation or closing. Review sessions look across attempts for recurring patterns.

Track only a few patterns at once. Examples include interrupting, delayed exploration of ideas and concerns, weak safety-netting, excessive jargon or rushing the close. Your next scenario should deliberately expose the most important pattern again.

Know what solo practice cannot provide

Self-review can miss blind spots. Study partners, tutors and formal mocks can add an external view, especially for clinical accuracy and behaviours you no longer notice in yourself. Solo spoken practice is best treated as frequent rehearsal between those external checks, not proof that every conclusion is correct.