Behavioral Science Shelf Prep

[om207]

Any one have advice for the behavioral science shelf exam? Esp. on how to approach answers to the "what would you say next" questions?

thanks in advance

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[ralhtar]

our school had given us these bs notes that they had compiled alongwith a full day of saturday worth of lecture on bs...at first i thought that both the notes and the lecture were great but then the following saturday when we took the behavioral sc. shelf exam i was surprised to see how useless the notes and lecture was....

...so i started looking for other sources and i found that kaplan's bs book was awesome....it has lots of charts and "rules" that give u a structural framework of what to do next....all u have to do is follow the rules...after having taken the shelf exam i can say that had i gone over kaplan's book i would've done great on the shelf....so thats my experience...i'm not sure if there are any other great books out there that would help...i heard that teh bs brs is good too..but i've heard that kaplan's is better...i've personally never looked at bs brs

hope this helps!

 

[JBlue]

I took the shelf exam a couple of weeks ago and scored an 89, my highest shelf to date. I second the Kaplan bs book. The ethics and patient relationship chapters give you a list of rules to answer the questions. As I was taking the shelf I just followed the rules and it apparently worked like a charm. I also used BRS behavioral for questions,did all of the qbank behavioral questions, reviewed CNS pharm from FA and read the behavioral chapter out of USMLE secrets (this was all done over the course of a month, not the weekend before the test or anything). The thing that helped the most actually was doing 50 q bank questions and reading the explanations right before I took the exam. Good luck. It was probably the easiest shelf exam I have taken and if you read the kaplan or even BRS patient relations/ethics chapters you will do fine.

 

[om207]

thanks so much JBlue and rahltar!

 

[SkylineMD]

would you recommend using BRS to study for this? or just use it primarily for questions? lastly, do they nitpick and ask which person came up with what theory?

 

[MeowMix]

I used BRS beh sci and it was good. Should have spent more time memorizing developmental stages. And there was a ton of pharm on it. I thought it was kind of a bizarre exam.

 

[JBlue]

I don't remember them asking about Erikson etc. I think BRS to study for it would be fine. If you have Qbank do the behavioral questions. I thought they were very much like the shelf. There are only like 100 total and the explanations are really good especially for the "what would you say" questions and the ethics questions. Also, there is NO statistics/epidimiology on the exam. Some of my classmates spent a lot of time studying this because it is in the BRS but there was none on the exam.

 

[DoctorWannaBe]

Also, there is NO statistics/epidimiology on the exam. Some of my classmates spent a lot of time studying this because it is in the BRS but there was none on the exam.

Doesn't that just depend on which form of the exam you get? Stats are included in First Aid, so some people must get that stuff.

 

[JBlue]

Doesn't that just depend on which form of the exam you get? Stats are included in First Aid, so some people must get that stuff.

I didn't see stats listed as a part of the behavioral science exam on the NBME website so I didn't bother studying it for the shelf. It turned out fine. My thought is that they put it into the review books and in FA with the behavioral science because it is the most convienient place to put it. I could be wrong though.

 

[mikedc813]

I used Qbank as a guide as far as the "what would you do/say" questions. Kaplan is also a good source for BS in general.

 

[SkylineMD]

I have a behavioral science shelf 3 days after my final exam for the course. I have been debating between using BRS Behavioral Science and Kaplan BS as books to use to study from but am unsure of which would be better for the shelf? Also, would it be worthwhile to go through the questions in Qbank instead of the questions at the back of BRS?

 

[shaggy411]

our school had given us these bs notes that they had compiled alongwith a full day of saturday worth of lecture on bs...at first i thought that both the notes and the lecture were great but then the following saturday when we took the behavioral sc. shelf exam i was surprised to see how useless the notes and lecture was....

...so i started looking for other sources and i found that kaplan's bs book was awesome....it has lots of charts and "rules" that give u a structural framework of what to do next....all u have to do is follow the rules...after having taken the shelf exam i can say that had i gone over kaplan's book i would've done great on the shelf....so thats my experience...i'm not sure if there are any other great books out there that would help...i heard that teh bs brs is good too..but i've heard that kaplan's is better...i've personally never looked at bs brs

hope this helps!

which edition are you talking about for kaplan behavioral...."charts" and "rules' thanks?