How do you approach a board question?

[lovePOP]

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[MelMcT2009]

I'm retaking a board exam I failed. I find I felt rushed during the first try, and that maybe my approach to the questions could be improved.

So for those who did well on board exams:

How do you approach a question? Read the answers first then the whole question? Just read from top to bottom? Highlight key points?

Thanks for sharing tips 🙂

I read the last sentence first. Often you'll get really long stem and then the question will end up being like "what is the mechanism of this drug" - and you didn't need to read any other part of the question. If I don't get enough by reading the last sentence I usually start reading backwards a few sentences. The majority of the time you'll be able to answer the question without reading the entire stem. When I'm done I usually go back and skim the entire question quickly. This worked great for step 1.

If it is a question that you cannot do this with start by reading the actual question first. Not necessarily looking at the answer choices, but at least reading the question. This way you know what you're looking for while you are reading through the stem.

 

[justin1390]

I briefly browse the last sentence and look over the types of answers first, and I highly recommend this to everyone. As already mentioned, board questions are designed to take a certain amount of time to work through start to finish, even if it's as simple as the most common cause of purulent cellulitis. Reading the last sentence first will shave extra minutes off which can be added to more difficult questions. Same thing with the answer sets. Knowing what data you have to work with helps a lot as you test that answer set against the stem. Finally, I weed out obvious wrong answers while reading the stem, narrow to two, then take my best guess if the obvious answer remains elusive.