Final Thoughts On Pre-test For Surgery Shelf.....

[voltron77]

Is Pre-test for the Surgery shelf worth doing? Those questions are really difficult!!!!! Please post your thoughts here.....Thanks so much for your opinions......

Good luck to everyone.....

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[randomedstudent]

I've answered this exact same question before, but again, I say no, Pretest is not worth it for surgery. Most of those questions are just not the same type as the ones on the shelf. The shelf is mostly case based, you either make the diagnosis on a pt. who presents to the ER or clinic, or you make a post-op management decision (ie. what is the cause of a pts. fever on post-op day 3 and how should you treat it). HTH.

 

[Paws]

I have given up on Pre-test, even tho I did try and work my way through it. Too tough and obscure!!!

Instead I am just working my way through Surg Recall and Case Files and general medicine books like Harrison's for the 'how to deal with patients' aspect.

 

[dentate_gyrus]

I have given up on Pre-test, even tho I did try and work my way through it. Too tough and obscure!!!

Instead I am just working my way through Surg Recall and Case Files and general medicine books like Harrison's for the 'how to deal with patients' aspect.

I know it is a pain, but Lawrence had just about all of the shelf material covered (except ortho) and is it really isn't that long (depending on the length of clerkship). If you are already going for Harrison's you must like reading alot anyway. Case Files is great, but it does have gaps that need to be filled in. They are especially weak in developing DDx, which can make those multiple choice answers on the shelf alot more reasonable. That being said if you understand everything in Recall you will be golden.

 

[LoneCoyote]

As I said on the other thread on the Surgery shelf, I would skip the Pretest. I started doing it and was getting nowhere. One day I brought in some of the qestions I was getting wrong and was asking some cool interns/residents on my team about them. They all said not to do Pretest, that the types of things they were asking were about specific procedures and that would NOT be on the test. What one intern said was that if you had extra time (yeah right) you could go through Pretest and selectively do questions by just doing ones that seemed reasonable and ignoring all the obscure ones. For me that was way to much work so I just skipped it and did fine without using it. Good luck with the shelf.

 

[randomedstudent]

I second the Lawrence book. That was perhaps my favorite book of 3rd year, but unfortunately I didn't have time to finish it (started too late, it would have been manageable if I wasn't such a procrastinator). It is very well written and surprisingly concise for a "text", ie. it's not like harrison's which I think only God could finish in a clerkship. I really understood a lot of the pathophys better after reading Lawrence. Good luck.

 

[Paws]

Well, I'm not actually reading Harrisons or anything. Just dipping into it here and there for certain things. Mostly just using Recall and Lawrence.

 

[njbmd]

Pre-Test and Appleton & Lange are practically worthless for the General Surgery Shelf exam. Lawrence and Recall are more than enough. You do not need the Lawrence Specialty book either (nice if you are going to do a fourth-year elective in one of the Surgical Specialties though).

 

[jendc08]

I took the surgery shelf a couple of weeks ago and thought Pretest was really helpful. I never touched a textbook and just used the usual reviews and then pretest...and was pretty happy with the result. I don't actually want to go into surgery though, so did not need 98% or something

 

[Hard24Get]

Pre-Test and Appleton & Lange are practically worthless for the General Surgery Shelf exam. Lawrence and Recall are more than enough. You do not need the Lawrence Specialty book either (nice if you are going to do a fourth-year elective in one of the Surgical Specialties though).

But what if you want practice questions? I fall asleep just reading, so I need questions to motivate me back to it.... Any suggestions?