How thoroughly should you review answers and explanations?

[JustPass]

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How thoroughly should you review answers and explanations when doing Qbank questions (usmlerx, uworld, kaplan, and etc)?

Its taking me a long time to review questions because im trying to go over each answer choices, find them on first aid, review related topic on it, and do that for each question.

For example,
Question: foul smelling diarrhea after campying with motile pear shaped trophozoite?
Answer choice:
A. Giardia
B. E coli
C. Histoplasma
D. Gi cancer
E. Norovirus
I would read the explanations on the q bank for Giardia, look it up on FA, and go over other things that are on that page (e.g. c. Diff, e. Coli, salmonella, or w/e)
THEN, do the same for e. Coli
Then histo,
Then GI cancer …. Blah blah blah

This is taking forever and and I don’t know if im retaining most (I know I don’t)

Is this a good method or should I just stick to reading explanation for correct answer and why the answer I picked is wrong?

Any thoughts?

 

[KVBane]

Your future exams may have questions the answers to which could be the other three choices that you decided not to learn about - so simply for that reason you should be studying everything.

Also you just need to study efficiently, learn buzzwords, and learn differences. For example in the above question, I saw the word throphozoite, and based simply on that i could eliminate 4 of the choices, because those wouldnt fit. Im only able to do that because I know the fundamental TESTABLE differences between them. This applies to everything.

 

[whatisthisstuff]

I mean it just depends. If its something you know well then probably not that much. If its something you don't know well than alot. Also there will be alot of repetition with the answer choices so its not like you should be having to look everything up for every question.

I would do your best to learn what you can. I think bringing in all those resources every time is probably unnecessary unless you really have no idea what any of those answer choices are. Also depending on the QBank the explanations they give are probably sufficient. One pass through sketchymedical would answer that question like a breeze.

 

[ortnakas]

Maybe not every question option, since that would take forever. I looked up the question topic and answer, annotated whatever I need to, and then maybe looked up the other answer if I had narrowed it down to two.

 

[JustPass]

thanks guys.
Maybe my example questions was too easy for yall. I was making it up on the spot.
But yea, for that question, getting the correct answer from the keyword is quick and easy but going over all the answers and topics involved with is taking a long, long, long time for me.

 

[Mr Roboto]

An MS3 who did very well on boards told me when going through a Qbank to learn why the answer is right, and also why the other answers were wrong.

 

[whatisthisstuff]

thanks guys.
Maybe my example questions was too easy for yall. I was making it up on the spot.
But yea, for that question, getting the correct answer from the keyword is quick and easy but going over all the answers and topics involved with is taking a long, long, long time for me.

I think the key is just understanding, why its right and why the others are wrong (as mentioned). Since the material shouldn't be completely foreign to you it's probably not necessary to read past the explanations. Obviously if you are confused then look it up. The only two I have used (Kaplan and UWorld) have perfectly sufficient explanations. I would definitely read the entire explanation...but as far as meticulously going through every answer choice...probably not that necessary for most questions where a few of them will be obviously wrong if you are familiar with the material.

The questions that take the longest are on topics that I have really forgotten (IE 1st year stuff) and I feel the need to go through the entire explanation so I can pull out facts I don't remember. If you are doing questions on stuff you haven't covered (which I wouldn't recommend) then that would obviously take longer because you are basically learning the material for the first time. That said, reviewing does take some time...on average atleast 1-2x as long as it takes to answer the question with some variability depending on how confident you were with your answer.