Approach to Drug Ads & Abstracts

[strive01]

Ive seen some Drug Ads & abstracts questions on UW and wanted to know

1) Do people have a good approach to those questions when they see those?

2) Are there any good sources that go over how to attack those drug ads or abstracts?

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[hbali]

They're pretty tough.

When you go through each block save them for last b/c they can take up serious time that could be used to answer other questions.
Look at all the pages of the ad/abstracts and make sure to read everything because usually the answer will be hidden and/or require you to look at multiple sections of the text.
Sometimes you can use common sense to answer the questions without really having to look at the text, make sure your answer makes "sense".
The uworld practice ones can be helpful but I would like it if they had more.

 

[thehundredthone]

I would recommend reading the questions before you read the abstract/ad, same as with any other question. That way you know what you're looking for while reading. Sometimes the questions don't require any reading at all or the answer is in the first paragraph of the question. At other times you need to examine the charts and data. A good understanding of biostatistics is usually required to draw the right inferences.

 

[strive01]

thank you!! any other helpful advice would be great

 

[MedicalBeast]

is there another source of practice questions? I have done uworld on random but don't feel adequately prepared for the drug ad / bio statistics questions. what did you guys use to prepare for these questions?

 

[surgicel]

How many do you get in the entire exam?
and is there any way to tell how many of them are experimental if anyone can tell from a feeling for which ones were way too tough to be real questions

 

[Phloston]

I would like it if the USMLE didn't think that randomly introducing drug ads into Step 2 made sense.

 

[cher25]

How many do you get in the entire exam?
and is there any way to tell how many of them are experimental if anyone can tell from a feeling for which ones were way too tough to be real questions

I don't think it's possible for anyone to know which questions on these exams are experimental. There was 1 drug add on my exam and it had 3 questions attached to it.

 

[ERDoc2b2014]

I also only had one drug ad on my whole test, with 3 questions attached to it - I think in my 4th or 5th block. The best advice I received was to do the best I could throughout the rest of the block and when I encountered the abstract/drug ad questions, mark them, save them until the end, take a glance through the question and the text, and just guess - I must have picked C for all 3 of them. We'll see how that worked out in a few weeks.

I spoke to several people who did well on CK on how to strategically get through these questions - because they are so long and require a lot of analytic thinking in a short span of time, which is so terrifying on test day. What I gathered from these conversations with those who actually practiced and worked through the Uworld examples was that the probability of getting them right is no different from if you just guess on all of them. Additionally, spending time on reading abstracts and figuring out how to answer any number of questions they could pose to you about them on test day doesn't actually increase your gains when it comes to high yield material you could otherwise be studying.

 

[cher25]

I also only had one drug ad on my whole test, with 3 questions attached to it - I think in my 4th or 5th block. The best advice I received was to do the best I could throughout the rest of the block and when I encountered the abstract/drug ad questions, mark them, save them until the end, take a glance through the question and the text, and just guess - I must have picked C for all 3 of them. We'll see how that worked out in a few weeks.

I spoke to several people who did well on CK on how to strategically get through these questions - because they are so long and require a lot of analytic thinking in a short span of time, which is so terrifying on test day. What I gathered from these conversations with those who actually practiced and worked through the Uworld examples was that the probability of getting them right is no different from if you just guess on all of them. Additionally, spending time on reading abstracts and figuring out how to answer any number of questions they could pose to you about them on test day doesn't actually increase your gains when it comes to high yield material you could otherwise be studying.

+1 I had the exact same approach. I was so pressed for time on the exam that I wasn't going to risk not seeing 10 questions just to answer 3.