How did you organize studying for clerkships?

[Newyawk]

Just wondering how people approach studying for clerkships. Say medicine. Theres so much to learn from step up to med, OME, uworld, etc but no clear organization.
Did you study by system? Do questions by system/continuous random?

Thank you in advance

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[Oso]

I recommend doing uworld questions - all systems/random. Read major topics in Step Up (MI, CHF, Asthma, COPD, Pneumonia, AKI, DM, etc.) to have a core foundation. Then use Step Up as reference for other topics that come up with your specific patients.

 

[Newyawk]

Uworld + reading up on patients was enough to honor most rotations for me. There are some very minimal additions I would do for most others.

OB has a set of questions through their society that I did. Surgery I did the pestana stuff and some IM questions. I think for the rest I didn’t do anything extra. Might not work for everyone though.

thanks. so at the start of the clerkship you just dove into uworld random question sets?

 

[operaman]

For shelves it’s usually a matter of doing enough practice questions. You presumably have a lot of foundational knowledge already from your preclinical years. On shelves, there are a finite number of questions that they can ask you, so doing enough practice sets will expose you to most of them.

My goal was getting through two full sources of practice questions. Getting through ALL questions in a source is key so you aren’t missing anything. Pick whichever two sources you like; this typically ends up being around 1000-1200 questions. For im, UWorld probably has enough to stand alone.

Beyond that you’ll read for patients and have some formal didactics as well. We didn’t have OME during my third year or I would have used that too.

I’m also the weirdo that likes using a more comprehensive source like Harrison’s. While obviously there isn’t time to read all of it, I found it helpful to read chapters on the most frequently encountered conditions. I found this super helpful for rounds and whatnot because the most common issues are probably ones you’re going to see and get pimped on; if you’ve read and internalized a big textbook chapter on that topic, they’re going to have to work to find a pimp question you can’t answer. Plus I can still comfortably work up and manage a lot of those conditions.

 

[Redpancreas]

Just wondering how people approach studying for clerkships. Say medicine. Theres so much to learn from step up to med, OME, uworld, etc but no clear organization.
Did you study by system? Do questions by system/continuous random?

Thank you in advance

Just dive right into UWorld and finish all the questions. For Medicine since there’s like 1300+, if it’s not your first, start early by #1 mixing those questions into whatever specialty you’re on #2 using your free time during psych or your elective to do medicine questions. Also pick a book. Everyone likes to promote their favorite series and I’ve done my fair share of it too, but at the end of the day they all have the potential to work for you. I’ll go ahead and say PreTest for Peds/Neuro because they’re very minutiae heavy and tons of questions will help (also don’t be afraid to use First Aid Step 1 again, you can hit CK during CK dedicated ). For Psychiatry, either Lange or First Aid for PSYCH will work. For Surgery, since there’s fewer questions you can afford two resources and I recommend Devirgilio’s (looks large, but pages go by quickly)and Pestana’s. For OB/GYN and Family I recommend Case Files because they’re broader shelf exams. For OB/GYN there’s some additional question bank I recommend whose name I forgot and then for family, you can use In-Training Exams (2012-2015), 250q each with detailed explanations. Finally for IM, I struggled with SUTM because it was so large and reading it didn’t help much stick. I would say focus on UWorld and do a lot of NBME shelf’s and UpToDate whatever you need. Do the MKSAP for med students if you need more questions because they have explanations too. Also, for OnlineMedEd you’re right to use that for every course too. You actually want to watch the lectures first because just like Pathoma, they give the basic framework you can fit the details into after (weakness with OME like Pathoma is lack of comprehensiveness). You can waste time reading the notes if you’d like, but they’re the same as what he says and there’s plenty of other stuff to read (UW explanations, PreTest, CaseFilles). It’s a rigorous plan but I think you can handle it @Newyawk

 

[Newyawk]

Just dive right into UWorld and finish all the questions. For Medicine since there’s like 1300+, if it’s not your first, start early by #1 mixing those questions into whatever specialty you’re on #2 using your free time during psych or your elective to do medicine questions. Also pick a book. Everyone likes to promote their favorite series and I’ve done my fair share of it too, but at the end of the day they all have the potential to work for you. I’ll go ahead and say PreTest for Peds/Neuro because they’re very minutiae heavy and tons of questions will help (also don’t be afraid to use First Aid Step 1 again, you can hit CK during CK dedicated ). For Psychiatry, either Lange or First Aid for PSYCH will work. For Surgery, since there’s fewer questions you can afford two resources and I recommend Devirgilio’s (looks large, but pages go by quickly)and Pestana’s. For OB/GYN and Family I recommend Case Files because they’re broader shelf exams. For OB/GYN there’s some additional question bank I recommend whose name I forgot and then for family, you can use In-Training Exams (2012-2015), 250q each with detailed explanations. Finally for IM, I struggled with SUTM because it was so large and reading it didn’t help much stick. I would say focus on UWorld and do a lot of NBME shelf’s and UpToDate whatever you need. Do the MKSAP for med students if you need more questions because they have explanations too. Also, for OnlineMedEd you’re right to use that for every course too. You actually want to watch the lectures first because just like Pathoma, they give the basic framework you can fit the details into after (weakness with OME like Pathoma is lack of comprehensiveness). You can waste time reading the notes if you’d like, but they’re the same as what he says and there’s plenty of other stuff to read (UW explanations, PreTest, CaseFilles). It’s a rigorous plan but I think you can handle it @Newyawk

Thanks a lot man!

 

[Stagg737]

Thanks a lot man!

This was my approach:

Made sure I got through every UWorld question for whatever shelf it was. Just did questions throughout the day when I found time. Even on the busiest days I could still get through 20-30 questions pretty easily here and there. The only exception to this imo is psych. I felt like the UWorld questions weren't very good for psych compared to the real thing and that Lange was far better. Got over 90% of the UWorld psych questions right, didn't do as well on the real shelf (still did fine, but nowhere near what my UWorld percentile suggested). For FMED, I used ComBank because it was the only shelf our school used the NBOME for instead of NBME (had to fit OMM in somewhere).

I also made sure I picked 1 textbook that I thought was solid to reference for each section, and for everything but IM and FM I tried to know them really well. For psych it was FA for psych, OB/Gyn was Blueprints (about 8 chapters are super high-yield), and Peds was BRS (it's older, but mostly still correct). I tried to know those books inside and out for the shelves and did far, far better on them than my pre-clinical grades and boards would have predicted. I just used Pestana for surgery because I wasn't concerned with honoring that rotation and just wanted to pass comfortably (did). For IM and FM I didn't try to use any textbooks to actually try and learn, just used SU2M as a reference along with the UWorld questions (as there are 1300 for IM).

I'll also add, I only used OME for OB/Gyn and psych then stopped. It was great for gyn, but horrible for OB. It also had a lot of really obvious and bad errors in some of the psych videos, to the point that I just didn't trust the info. Apparently it's better for IM and several of the videos have been updated since, but I didn't use it and was happy with (almost) all of my scores. I also used Case Files for Psych and did several of the UWorld IM questions for surgery, as there's a fair amount of overlap. Generally though, I did not use one product/source consistently for shelves other than UWorld, as I feel like some companies do a much better job for one subject and are really bad for others (Blue prints is a great example, fantastic for OB/Gyn, horrible for some other areas).

 

[Newyawk]

This was my approach:

Made sure I got through every UWorld question for whatever shelf it was. Just did questions throughout the day when I found time. Even on the busiest days I could still get through 20-30 questions pretty easily here and there. The only exception to this imo is psych. I felt like the UWorld questions weren't very good for psych compared to the real thing and that Lange was far better. Got over 90% of the UWorld psych questions right, didn't do as well on the real shelf (still did fine, but nowhere near what my UWorld percentile suggested). For FMED, I used ComBank because it was the only shelf our school used the NBOME for instead of NBME (had to fit OMM in somewhere).

I also made sure I picked 1 textbook that I thought was solid to reference for each section, and for everything but IM and FM I tried to know them really well. For psych it was FA for psych, OB/Gyn was Blueprints (about 8 chapters are super high-yield), and Peds was BRS (it's older, but mostly still correct). I tried to know those books inside and out for the shelves and did far, far better on them than my pre-clinical grades and boards would have predicted. I just used Pestana for surgery because I wasn't concerned with honoring that rotation and just wanted to pass comfortably (did). For IM and FM I didn't try to use any textbooks to actually try and learn, just used SU2M as a reference along with the UWorld questions (as there are 1300 for IM).

I'll also add, I only used OME for OB/Gyn and psych then stopped. It was great for gyn, but horrible for OB. It also had a lot of really obvious and bad errors in some of the psych videos, to the point that I just didn't trust the info. Apparently it's better for IM and several of the videos have been updated since, but I didn't use it and was happy with (almost) all of my scores. I also used Case Files for Psych and did several of the UWorld IM questions for surgery, as there's a fair amount of overlap. Generally though, I did not use one product/source consistently for shelves other than UWorld, as I feel like some companies do a much better job for one subject and are really bad for others (Blue prints is a great example, fantastic for OB/Gyn, horrible for some other areas).

Thank you! Really helpful info

 

[TypeADissection]

I remember doing UWorld religiously for my medicine shelf. That plus patient-specific reading from uptodate was more than enough for me. It also carried through on my surgery shelf, which is a lot more medicine than people realize. Cheers.