Family med shelf

[ForensicPsych]

hey everyone,

i am wanting to go into EM (don't mind my username...change of heart occurred during this year), but an unfortunate thing happened....i ended up failing my family med shelf exam by 3 points. i have to retake the exam in june before i can even start my 4th year. does anyone know how bad this will affect me in getting into an EM residency out east?

i'm not really feeling good about this at all......any advice is much appreciated...

thanks.

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[ACSurgeon]

hey everyone,

i am wanting to go into EM (don't mind my username...change of heart occurred during this year), but an unfortunate thing happened....i ended up failing my family med shelf exam by 3 points. i have to retake the exam in june before i can even start my 4th year. does anyone know how bad this will affect me in getting into an EM residency out east?

i'm not really feeling good about this at all......any advice is much appreciated...

thanks.

I'm an MS3 so take what I say for what's worth. I think it will depend on a few factors, mainly your school/rotaton policy. Some of my rotations said that if you fail the shelf you retake it and your grade is reported with the new shelf score incorporated without mentioning you failed. Other rotations said they drop you a letter grade with the highest grade possibly being a B (or C in another rotation).

Talk to your school and see if the fail will show up. If not, and you end up with a C, I don't think that would be good enough to black-ball you from matching in EM (assuming you have other credintials).

Best of luck, and keep your head up.

 

[ForensicPsych]

to lazymed: thanks for responding. and i am an MS-3 as well.

at the moment, i can't start my 4th year in june until i take this exam. if i pass it the 2nd time, then i can only get as high as a Pass, with an indication that i failed the exam the first time on my official transcript. (my school has pass, high pass, and honors). as far as other credentials, my board scores are just average, and my clinical rotations have been average....so far i have 2 passes, 1 high pass, and 1 honors in an elective i did. i also have 1 publication as a first author in a chapter in a book. my comments that i have for each rotation are really really good. it's just that these shelf exams are what brings down my clerkship grades.

i'm just really down by all of this, b/c i feel like no matter how great my comments are, it still comes down to the shelf exams....just like how it was 1st and 2nd years... i have never been a good standardized test taker (since SAT times), and i just feel like this constantly haunts me over and over again...

 

[MonkeyNuts!]

I took the Family Med shelf in October and got a 56 which was a 1%.

My school's cutoff for passing (for any shelf) is 7%. Doesn't matter what the raw is.

So it was recorded as a failure, and was listed as an incomplete.

Retook it in December, got a 59 which was a 4%. Then my grade for the course was listed as an F. Didn't matter that my clinical evals, oral exam, and group project grades were all fine. At Stony Med if you can't get 7% after two tries, it's an automatic F.

I just took the exam today for a THIRD time. So cheer up Forensic Psych, because could be worse lol. If I have to hear "third time's the charm" one more time, I will paint the med student lounge with monkey ****.

 

[ForensicPsych]

eternalrage,

i'm really sorry to hear what happened. that is my biggest fear is that i will fail it again. because it's the same in my school....if you fail the 2nd time, then you get an F for the course, regardless of all the other things that might have been great for the record.

ahhhh family medicine is ruining my life!!! this makes me think, how the hell did i get through the medicine shelf and not this stupid shelf?!

 

[MonkeyNuts!]

eternalrage,

i'm really sorry to hear what happened. that is my biggest fear is that i will fail it again. because it's the same in my school....if you fail the 2nd time, then you get an F for the course, regardless of all the other things that might have been great for the record.

ahhhh family medicine is ruining my life!!! this makes me think, how the hell did i get through the medicine shelf and not this stupid shelf?!

lol I passed the IM shelf too. I get asked all the time, "how did you pass medicine and ambcare, and not FM?"

I have the sort of ironic luck where things like this happen, shrug.

 

[ForensicPsych]

welll.....i just found out yesterday that i passed my peds shelf! yay! and out of all the shelf exams i have taken this year, this has been my best shelf yet! and i think i found my answer....do SOME freaking review book out there no matter what! i look back to all the other shelf exams i have passed, and in every one of them, i went through an entire question review book.

i realized that was the mistake i did for the FM shelf. i did NOT get any review books like NMS or pretest, and instead did that stupid familypractice.org questions....useless in my opinion.

i think now after i got my peds exam back, it boosted some of my hope again in that i just need to do a review book no matter what. i need to trust in those question books!

 

[MonkeyNuts!]

Congrats

I got my score back for my third attempt on FM last Friday, it was 71, 46%ile.

Yeah I would say do Case Files FM and Pretest FM at the very least. Then do UWorld or Kaplan Q's if you have time in IM, Peds, OBGYN, ignoring all the non-family-practice-ish questions. I actually was assigned a tutor who also took me through parts of Case Files Peds and OBGYN and also Pretest for those subjects as well.

That is all mad overkill, but you wanna make sure you pass...