Epidemiology is a cornerstone for the practice of evidence-based medicine, but for the sake of medical licensing exams, only the very basics are “high yield knowledge.” Rather than having to sift through PowerPoint slides or a textbook, I compiled a one page handout of must-know-facts for the boards while preparing…
USMLE Step 3 is the last board exam a physician must pass to practice medicine in the United States. It can only be taken after graduating from medical school; most residents take it in their intern year before getting into the bulk of their residency training. However, there are a…
One of the perils of taking standardized medical exams is the stark contrast between “textbook” and “clinical” medicine. Physicians try to abide by the latest guidelines and evidence-based practices, but this doesn’t always translate to test questions which may have been written months/years in the past. Some of the questions…
Its been almost a month since my last post; I think that’s the longest I’ve gone without an update since starting this blog. 😯 My life has been a balance between residency interviews and studying for USMLE Step 2 CK as of late. I fell ill two weeks ago and…
With only one rotation left in medical school (my internal medicine sub-internship in January 2013), I have the next few months to attend to my residency interviews and extracurriculars. That being said, I wanted to first knock Step 2 CK out at some point in late October. After perusing the…
Per the USMLE website, Step 2 Clinical Skills (CS) “uses standardized patients to test medical students and graduates on their ability to gather information from patients, perform physical examinations, and communicate their findings to patients and colleagues.” Yeah, and it’s a pass/fail exam which costs over $1,100 and is offered…
The night before the exam, I slept a total of 2-3 hours. After midnight, my mind was racing with everything I learned over the last few weeks. It’s like I was consciously consolidating information; my heart was racing and I had a horrible headache. Why my brain chose to sacrifice…
Tomorrow I’ll be taking the most important exam of my life to date – the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) Step 1. I’ve spent countless hours reading and completed thousands of practice questions, yet there’s an underlying sense of eustress (see what I did there… using my behavioral science)…
Over the last 48 hours, I’ve completed UWorld’s SA #2 and NBME #7, scoring equivalent scores of 265 and 259, respectively. While I’m humbled by these results, the real exam is 75% longer than any of the practices I’ve done, so endurance might become an issue on test day.
At this point, I’ve gone through all 2090 USMLE World questions, UWorld’s Self Assessment #1 (around 200 questions), over 1000 NBME questions, 300 questions from Kaplan’s free Qbank, the 138 questions from the USMLE website, and any random questions I can find on forums across the Internet. With only eight…