Step III Good books for drug ads

[Rock2168]

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I find the drug ads to be confusing and extremely time consuming. It takes me forever to understand the truth hiding behind the words/charts/graphs. It dawned upon me that since I am not used to reading such things, I should make it a daily habit to hit up one a day. I tried hitting up pub med, but it's a time consuming prospect for a drug ad initiate. Does anyone know any books out there that specifically target this material and outline or summarize it?

On a side note, I wonder about why the drug ads are on step 3 in the first place. The exam targets you as if you were a Primary Care Practitioner. For the most part, PCPs have to adhere to the drug formularies of the insurance companies. Any attempt at prescribing new and often expensive drugs will leave them with a phone call from either the pharmacy or an upset patient saying that the medicine is not covered and that it costs way too much.

 

[predmed123]

Yeah, unfortunately UWorld doesn't have a whole lot of them, but I didn't find a better resource to get more of them. I actually do think they're a good idea; even if you're not prescribing such meds, it's no secret that Pharmaceuticals are always going to find ways to advertise their products to Physicians, and I think it's a very important skill to look at their provided studies and being able to separate the fact from BS. That being said, the way Step 3 presents it, and with how quickly you're expected to dissect such an ad without dwelling on minutiae that eats up precious block time, feels a bit excessive to me. In retrospect, I think I would've spent some more time looking over the few UWorld Drug Ads and just trying to think what exactly is tripping me up on the question, and what I can do to make it easier. I wish I could give a better response but I struggled a lot with these as well.