Tag: Study

Posted on

How To Study For USMLE Step 1

I’ve been getting a lot of messages on Instagram about how to study for USMLE step 1 so figured I would put all of my answers into one concise blog post. First off, take my advice with a grain of salt. Actually, you take anyone’s advice on how to succeed in medical school with a grain of salt. What worked for me might not work for you. That being said, I hit my goal of getting a +240 score on USMLE step 1 and this is how I did it.

 

 

Step studying starts day 1 of medical school

I struggled a lot my first semester of medical school because I had to learn how to learn. Everything you see from day one of medical school can show up on your USMLE’s. So my biggest advice on how to study for step 1 or step 2 CK is to learn everything right the first time around. Remember that at the end of the day you aren’t studying to pass your classes. You’re studying for your step exams.

 

 

Start using question banks early

I’ve previously written about how to study in medical school, my favorite resources in medical school and my favorite resources for USMLE Step 2 CK. A recurring theme is question banks. Again I will reiterate 2 things: (1) that question banks are meant to challenge you to apply your knowledge and find gaps in your knowledge to then go back and study and (2) UWorld is the gold standard. Save UWorld for when you are truly in your two months of intense step 1 studying. But when you are in medical school I encourage you to use other question banks like Kaplan. I used Kaplan as a second year medical student while I tutored gross anatomy to supplement my knowledge base and show me the scope and depth that I truly needed to know for the test. Incorporate question banks as early as possible.

 

 

Use your resources consistently

Just like question banks the rest of your study resources are important tools for success. The more you use them the more valuable they become. For instance, if you plan on using Picmonic you should start using it early in medical school. It loses its value if you only start using it in the months leading up to USMLE step 1. Similarly, don’t stop using whatever resources you found valuable during medical school. If you used Pathoma then keep using it. If you used FirstAid then keep using it! And if you found that you didn’t like certain resources then don’t use them!

 

 

My background

If you don’t already know, I went to Ross University School of Medicine. Back when I started at this Caribbean medical school it was strictly an accelerated program. We did the first two years of medical school in 18 months (they now have a ‘slow’ track too). This gave me 2 full months of strict step 1 studying before I started third year clinical rotations. On top of those two months, we finished our last semester of 2nd year a month early to allow us to study for a comprehensive exam that we had to pass in order to leave the island. So I was refreshing my knowledge for one month before I started my non-stop, pedal to the metal step 1 studying.

 

 

My resources

I used everything that helped me succeed in medical school. That included the following:

 

 

Overall and daily schedule

I had 2 months of strict step 1 studying time. I used Doctors in Training (DIT) which acted as the backbone of my study curriculum. DIT created an awesome two month calendar for me. Inside that timeline I put one true weekend off for a snowboarding trip. Other than that I isolated myself and didn’t really go out much.

My daily schedule consisted of the following:

  • 730am – 745am: review Picmonic
  • 745am – 8am: review notes from yesterday
  • 8am- 9am: 1 full UWorld question set
  • 9am- 12pm: reviewing UWorld
  • 12pm-1pm: lunch break
  • 1pm – 5pm: 4 hours of DIT videos
  • 5pm – 8pm: exercise, dinner, relax
  • 8pm – 10pm: relax and passively review topics

I hope this helps! If you have any more specific questions drop them below. As always don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss my next post!

[button link=”http://wp.me/P31Asd-mT” icon=”envelope-o” color=”orange”]Subscribe![/button]

Posted on

How To Study For USMLE Step 3

In my prior post, When You Should Take Step 3,  I went over the importance of USMLE step 3 with regard to fellowships moving forward and gave some insight into figuring out the right time to take the exam. The following post covers the nitty gritty details about how to actually study for the exam including study strategies and resources. Of course, this is not the only way to study for step 3 but its the most common and the most successful way.

 

 

Format of the test

Day one is the prototypical USMLE step exam consisting of 6 blocks of 38-40 items plus 45 minutes of break time leaving you with a 7 hour test on day 1. Day 2 is a little different. It’s a 9 hour day split up into two main sections. First you start off with another 6 blocks of multiple choice questions. They only give you about 30 per section on day 2 compared to about 38-40 questions per section on day 1. After you complete all 6 sections you move on to the simulation cases. These are 13 cases that are meant to simulate how you would treat a patient in the real world. Check out the details on the USMLE website here.

 

 

How to study for it- USMLE World

I’m not kidding when I tell you that the one and only resource I used to study for my step 3 exam was UWorld. Okay, and my Master The Boards book for USMLE Step 2 CK when I couldn’t remember some obscure fact or mnemonic. Okay, and I guess I also used Picmonic cards here or there for those super rare and hard to memorize tumors from my step 1 days. But I rarely used secondary resources. I mostly jotted notes down in a moleskin notebook. UWorld or bust!

 

 

Brush up on your biostats

On day one of the exam expect to have at least 6-8 biostatistics questions per section. 3-4 of those questions are from drug advertisements. It sounds daunting but you truly just need to know the basics. I’m talking about number needed to treat (NNT), number needed to harm (NNH), odds ratio, and different forms of bias. All that jazz. Know it cold and you’ll do fine.

 

 

Interactive cases- practice, practice, practice

Half of doing well on the 13 interactive cases on day 2 is knowing how to use the interface. The medicine is actually the easy part. Personally, I did a third of the cases over the span of a few weeks and then the remaining two-thirds over the course of the weekend prior to my exam and I felt adequately prepared. A few colleagues of mine did all of them the weekend prior to their exam. They are annoying and frustrating to get through but as long as you don’t kill too many imaginary patients you should be fine.

 

 

 

Still have some burning questions about how to study for step 3? Leave a question in the comments section below! And don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss my next blog post!!

Posted on

How to Study for the Psych Clerkship Exam

Psych is generally regarded as the easiest of all the shelf exams. That doesn’t make studying for it any easier. Here’s how I approached it and what I would have done differently:

Overview: There is always overlap when it comes to clerkship exam content. On the psychiatry shelf you will be tested on neuro, pediatrics, OB/GYN, and some internal medicine along with psychiatry. It’s annoying but it makes sense if you think about it. For instance, if a patient comes in with increasing forgetfulness your differential list can be quite wide. This being your psych shelf you might be anchored to a diagnosis like pseudodementia secondary to depression but you also have to think about Alzheimer’s and hypothyroidism.

Psych Specific Tips: Know the timeline for psychiatric illnesses cold. You need to be able to differentiate brief psychotic disorder from schizophreniform from schizophrenia based on the timeline. And acute stress disorder from post-traumatic stress disorder. And both of those from adjustment disorder. It seems easy and it is. But the diagnostic criteria and various timelines can blend together quite easily when you are taking a two hour hour test and each question has the same differential diagnosis list. Also, psych meds are huge on this test so don’t neglect them.

Resources: First Aid for the Psychiatry Clerkship is gold. It has everything you need for both the clerkship exam and step two. My primary resource when I studied for step two was Master The Boards (MTB) by Conrad Fischer. It provides a good skeleton but leaves you dictating a lot of stuff that isn’t in the book. If you know everything in MTB then you will likely know all the high-yield stuff. But it is entirely comprehensive. That’s why I suggest the First Aid for Psych Clerkship. And as always, UWorld is the gold standard for practice questions.

Practice Questions: As I said, UWorld is the gold standard. Finishing the psych section is doable. I would also attack the neuro section while you’re at it. If you finish all of that then redo all the questions you got wrong. If you finish those questions and want more I would next use PreTest for pysch. PreTest presents a lot of good information that isn’t in any review books (FA, MTB included) or even in UWorld. Granted, some of these questions are beyond low-yield and you should always know the basics inside and out before you delve into the esoteric. That being said, PreTest is a good resource if you’re looking for a couple hundred more new practice questions before test day.

tl; dr: Use First Aid for the Psych Clerkship, annotate Master the Boards, finish the psych and neuro UWorld questions…and basically just know everything.

As always, this isn’t anything groundbreaking but I wish someone told me this when I started psych. Feel free to leave any follow-up questions you may have down below!