advice needed from those who have taken step II

[MyNameIsAlex]

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Hi,

I am currently in rotations, and will be completing internal med, surgery, family med, psych. I was thinking of taking step 2CK and/or CS *before* OBGYN & peds, technically i can read up on all that in 1-2 weeks, so im not sure i need a rotation for that. either way, i was thinking of taking 1 month off to study for step 2 CK and or CS, ....just after having done surgery, medicine, family and psych.... is that a suicide or does anybody think its possible?

i've done fairly well on step 1.

the reason i'm asking is because of personal timing issue.

any advice is greatly appreciated
thanks

 

[IM Substance P]

Hi,

I am currently in rotations, and will be completing internal med, surgery, family med, psych. I was thinking of taking step 2CK and/or CS *before* OBGYN & peds, technically i can read up on all that in 1-2 weeks, so im not sure i need a rotation for that. either way, i was thinking of taking 1 month off to study for step 2 CK and or CS, ....just after having done surgery, medicine, family and psych.... is that a suicide or does anybody think its possible?

i've done fairly well on step 1.

the reason i'm asking is because of personal timing issue.

any advice is greatly appreciated
thanks

It's suicide. Seriously. OB-Gyn is a rotation that covers material not covered ANYWHERE else in third year. It's also huge on Step 2CK.

I also can't see being successful on the peds questions without having spent a good six weeks studying it the first time.

The bare minimum for taking 2CK should be completing your rotations.

 

[fever106]

Hi,

I am currently in rotations, and will be completing internal med, surgery, family med, psych. I was thinking of taking step 2CK and/or CS *before* OBGYN & peds, technically i can read up on all that in 1-2 weeks, so im not sure i need a rotation for that. either way, i was thinking of taking 1 month off to study for step 2 CK and or CS, ....just after having done surgery, medicine, family and psych.... is that a suicide or does anybody think its possible?

i've done fairly well on step 1.

the reason i'm asking is because of personal timing issue.

any advice is greatly appreciated
thanks

In my opinion, this is a very very bad idea. Suicidal. Now, if you were saying you wanted to take ck before family medicine, that would be one thing. Family med is fairly redundant, and you learn all that stuff on your other rotations. But you can't just learn all the important material in pediatrics and obgyn by reading about it for a week. My obgyn rotation was 6 weeks, and peds was 8 weeks...that is 14 weeks of material! You need to complete the clerkships and the shelf exams first. You learn a ton by being on the floor, through course didactics, AND reading up when you get home. You will not retain the necessary information, or even really know what to focus on by just reading a review book for a few days. If you want to know the truth, I found the peds questions on my step 2 ck to be quite difficult, and there were a lot of them. It doesn't matter that you did well on step 1 when it comes to this issue. Step 2 is a very different exam. It is easier to do well on and requires less studying, but you need a complete background first. you are still missing a good 30-35% of the coursework. Now step 2 CS is another story. You could probably pass that since you have done medicine, as long as you are comfortable with patient encounters and did ok on the OSCE.

 

[Instatewaiter]

The peds and OB info in first aid is terrible. Really, they cover like nothing there. You really need the clerkship, especially for CK. The OB stuff is very intricate and you will not be able to pick up the necessary info in such a small amt of time. Plus if you take CK early, you definitely have to report it on ERAS (res applications), whereas if you take it right before you apply, you can hold the score until you get it.

You could probably get by with CS but it is not worth it.