Format Frustrations

[pdxhopeful]

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As I'm preparing, there are times I feel like I'm back in class with this one professor who had a habit of having two correct answers on the exam, but only one illustrated the point they were looking to make and was therefore correct.

Example? I just got a question about warfarin and a 7 day course of antibiotic treatment. You were supposed to answer that you'd lower the warfarin dose, and another answer was frequent INRs. I've been on warfarin for a decade and my doctors have NEVER cut my dose in response to short term antibiotics. They want an INR as soon as I'm done, to be sure I haven't gotten too far off course, but that's it.

So, pharmacology or actual practice?

 

[Frozengrapes]

I get what you're saying, but were the antibiotics you were on P450 inhibitors? Since the question is really going after that principle, maybe that is the difference. Also, did the question stem indicate a patient with a serious infection (requiring a longer antibiotic course) or other medications/conditions predisposing them to bleed? Because in that case, the safest thing to do could just be reduce the amount of warfarin they're on.

I mean you're right, but I think for Step 1 just focus on the principles they're really trying to target within the scope of our knowledge, i.e. the P450 inducers/inhibitors and interactions. If you're already in your third year, then I can imagine the frustration of having to put the clinical side on the backburner.