Best Review Courses for Written Board???

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Calilove

"Louisianimal"
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Any of you have any info on Jensen's Written Board review? Is it worth the $745??? Also, Cleveland Clinic hosts a written/oral board review in April i think... but I don't know anything about its quality.
Any ideas about the best review course for the written boards???

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Any of you have any info on Jensen's Written Board review? Is it worth the $745??? Also, Cleveland Clinic hosts a written/oral board review in April i think... but I don't know anything about its quality.
Any ideas about the best review course for the written boards???

Never took a review course, but I have heard good things about Jensen, bad things about Cleveland Clinic.
 
Took Jensen's written review course. He gives a manual at the course which is basically a condensed version of Big Blue, but the act of sitting there for four days doing practice questions and discussing the answers helped me. You will very likely pass with or without the course as long as you study diligently, but I have to say I feel the course helped. Don't worry about the money - just tack it on the the rest of the debt I'm sure you have with student loans. I plan to take a Jensen oral course too.
 
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Actually was talking to my attending today about board preps and Jensen. He took both, used big blue and big red, went to the classes and passed easily - both oral and written.

His thoughts, that as long as your passing your inservice exams you're probably good on written, but he didn't want to risk it.

He too had nothing but good things to say about the preps.

Goodluck

CJ
 
I had Big Blue available as a reference, but I ended up using Osler's CD/PDF course instead. I thought Big Blue was repetitive and poorly organized. I learn better in a lecture-based format, which is why I went with Osler. However, it wasn't perfect and notable gaps in the content, and I ended up supplementing it from material in Hall, Miller, and even Jensen. There is no one perfect source. In the end, I don't think it makes a large difference which source(s) you use, as long as you put in the effort to actually learn the material and do lots of practice questions.
 
I never took a review course for the writtens. I looked at someone else's copy of Big Blue for a couple of minutes and reailzed there is no way I could torture myself by reading through such a dry presentation of things I was supposed to memorize.

I did well on the in-training exams and the actual written test by reading legitimite texts and journals. I did occasionally force myself to make notes and memorize some of the basic facts, but that was not the bulk of my reading. I realized that if I focused on reading, learning, and memorizing concepts, techniques, and even plain factual knowledge that was actually useful in the OR, I would retain it, and get something out of it other than just passing the stupid test. I ENJOYED studying because I took that approach. I would read on the next day's cases, and on cases that I had recently done. If I had a complication, I would try to learn more about what (if anything) could have been done to prevent that. I still try to do that.

So I suggest that if you spend your money on a text, it should be on something you will actually read AFTER you pass the test as well. And I don't think Big Blue meets that criteria.
 
Same question. Worth it do Pass Machine or Jensen's course for 2017 written boards?
 
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