finally! how to study for COMLEX step 2

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HamSandwich

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i wish i had this information when studying for this exam last week but hopefully it will help some of you taking it in the future.

get swansons. do the whole book. 600 pages, you cant do it in a week without going crazy so give yourself a little more time, but boy, it was really *the* book to study from for that. I also used boards and wards to fill in any swanson gaps. that was pretty much it. i didnt use first aid or anything else. i had purchased the kaplan lecture notes and let them get dusty on the shelf. swansons was it!

how to do the questions:

PAY ATTENTION to clinical temporal profile. muy importante, so easy, but so easy to forget.

read each question, i know it goes without saying but they throw all these little clue in the cases and each wrong answer choice can be thrown out because of one of these clues. when they say something like "pt is IVDA' or "pt just got back from mexico" ask yourself why they are putting that in there unless it is relevant. they dont do too much by way of distractors. so read each word of every question. twice.

PAY ATTENTION to fever and -itises. inflammatory answers vs. no signs of infecton. keep all of these in mind.

might see like simple stuff but when you open the book and cant answer the first 10 (like me), you can get a little worked up and forget the easy part. so skip the first 10 and come back, it sure helped me out.

also read about EMTALA! from where i have no idea. but there were quite a few questions on it.

merry christmas

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oh lordy, now you are making me nervous. i feel like i did fairly well. swansons seemed to be pretty much dead on for this one. maybe not for other years? *ack* now two months of worrying when i was cool as a cucumber!
 
Sorry dude, don't mean to scare you. Before Step 2, one of my friends had heard Swanson's Review was the best... so he studied 80% of his time on Swanson's. I looked at it but didn't like it. Anyways, he ended up failing.

I'm sure you did fine.
 
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Personally, I felt that the Kaplan step 2 books were excellent for this exam. I thought Swanson's is more of a step 3 book.
 
Swanson's Family Practice Review: A Problem-Oriented Approach
by Alfred F. Tallia

i still think it is a great book for COMLEX. but the proof is in the pudding. i will let you know come the end of October.
 
Just out of curiosity, when did you guys start to study for step 2 of the COMLEX? Does the rule "two months, two weeks, two number two pencils" apply? Just wondering when would be a good time to start.
 
i really buckled down 3 weeks before the test (aside from the reading all along stuff). i was on rotation 4 days a week during this time but would crank on the my days off and at night. i really think it went okay.

oh and additional advice for COMLEX. dont forget to study your OMM. we had lots of cranial and also the lesions were more specific than step one. answer choices of

a. t3-t5
b. t4-t6
c. etc

unlike step one

a.c1-c4
b. t10-t12
c. s2-s5
blah blah blah

will keep you posted on the success of the swansons
 
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