Surgery on the CK exam

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I know people reccommend studying mostly IM for CK but there's got to be surgery questions on there, right? Anyway, I'm pretty weak in surgery right now. Anyone suggest a good review book or a good general textbook for surgery? I'm not looking for a bible or anything. Just something that will help me learn all the key, testable concepts.

For Step 2, use Pestana's review. Basically the kaplan surgery review notes (they were written by Pestana). 80ish extremely high yield pages. But make sure you have a solid base in IM before studying Pestana; he emphasizes the surgical care for diseases and glosses over some specifics of medical care that precedes surgical intervention. If you're studying for the surgery shelf now (I'm assuming you didn't take medicine yet), you WILL need to know a lot of IM for that shelf, be warned.

Thanks for your advice. I'm an Irish medical student so we don't have shelf exams. All of our exams are at the end of the year - kind of integrated finals. I really like how you guys have it in the US though with the shelfs.

I will check out that book - it's exactly the type of thing I was looking for. Thanks!

Originally Posted by Sage880

I know people reccommend studying mostly IM for CK but there's got to be surgery questions on there, right? Anyway, I'm pretty weak in surgery right now. Anyone suggest a good review book or a good general textbook for surgery? I'm not looking for a bible or anything. Just something that will help me learn all the key, testable concepts.

All I did was do USMLE World questions for surgery. You might want to look at BRS surgery too since it has a nice outline format. I used it for my surgery shelf and did well.

I don't recall much surgery being on my step II CK. Most that was there was related to trauma/emergency type situations. Crush Step II had the high yield stuff. I wouldn't focus on surgery or peds though, IM is where the money is (at least for this exam ).