Read time: 5 minutes
Every week, in one Telegram group or another, I see the same sentence:
“Looking for AMC Clinical practice partner. No beginners please.”
On the surface, it sounds efficient. Serious. “I value my time.”
But after watching this for years, and after passing my own exam while some of these same people are still posting the same line, I see it very differently.
The AMC Clinical Exam is not a theory quiz. It is a performance exam.
You pass or fail based on how many times you perform stations under pressure, how quickly you correct errors, and how automatic your clinical and communication routines become.
Anything that shrinks your practice pool, limits your station volume, or makes you wait around for the “perfect” partner is not a preference. It is a risk factor.
When you say “no beginners”, you are not just filtering people. You are filtering out potential sessions, potential feedback, and potential progress. In a performance exam, that is a dangerous trade.
Let’s be blunt. Most people who write “no beginners please” are not doing ten stations a day with a clean system.
They are not drowning in practice requests and desperately trying to protect their schedule.
They are usually doing the opposite.
They are posting, waiting, scrolling, complaining that “there are no good partners”, and then sitting in the same spot next week.
They are optimising for partner status instead of practice structure.
They are more worried about how “advanced” their partner sounds than about how many times they themselves have actually run an 8-minute station in the last seven days.
And here is the uncomfortable truth: there is zero guarantee that the person who says “no beginners” is performing at a higher level. Very often, they are not. They simply talk as if they are.
Practice with anyone.
Filter for structure, not status.
