IM and Surgery Shelf on the same day?

[agranulocytosis]

The situation at my school is such that I would have to either take the IM shelf 1/2 way into my Surgery rotation or wait until 2 months after my Surg rotation to do both. Either way, I would take the Surgery shelf 2 months after the end of the Surgery rotation.

Would I be better off to study for the two shelfs at the same time or get IM out of the way so I can focus on the Surgery rotation? I am interested in Surgery for residency so I'd like to do as well as possible on both the eval and the shelf.

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[jbp100]

Having just taken the surgery shelf yesterday (and took the medicine one about 2 months ago), there is alot of overlap between the two tests. If you are well studied for your medicine shelf and then add in the Pestana review, you should be fine. Do I envy the fact you would have to take 2 shelf exams on the same day? No. Is it doable? Yes.

Re-reading your post, I see that you want to do well on the surgery shelf, so maybe you should space them out! Going through the Lawrence online questions, Kaplan questions, and Pestana was all I used and I feel that I did well (won't know for sure until at least a month from now). Of course, I have no desire whatsoever to go in to surgery.

A lot of help am I this morning!

 

[agranulocytosis]

Having just taken the surgery shelf yesterday (and took the medicine one about 2 months ago), there is alot of overlap between the two tests. If you are well studied for your medicine shelf and then add in the Pestana review, you should be fine. Do I envy the fact you would have to take 2 shelf exams on the same day? No. Is it doable? Yes.

Re-reading your post, I see that you want to do well on the surgery shelf, so maybe you should space them out! Going through the Lawrence online questions, Kaplan questions, and Pestana was all I used and I feel that I did well (won't know for sure until at least a month from now). Of course, I have no desire whatsoever to go in to surgery.

A lot of help am I this morning!

Thanks! This is exactly the kind of feedback I'm looking for. I do understand that there is quite a bit of overlap between the two shelf exams, so that's kind of why I'm wondering if it would be more efficient to study for the two together. Additionally, I would rather not take out time to study for IM during Surgery, thereby decreasing the knowledge I acquire during rotation. But you do bring up a good point.

For what it's worth, if I do decide to take the IM shelf in the middle of Surgery, I would miss 3 days due to travel. This may have an impact on the evaluator's perception of my professionalism.

I think I may already have decided on taking both the same day. Can anyone else chime in on what they think about this?

 

[jbp100]

Thanks! This is exactly the kind of feedback I'm looking for. I do understand that there is quite a bit of overlap between the two shelf exams, so that's kind of why I'm wondering if it would be more efficient to study for the two together. Additionally, I would rather not take out time to study for IM during Surgery, thereby decreasing the knowledge I acquire during rotation. But you do bring up a good point.

For what it's worth, if I do decide to take the IM shelf in the middle of Surgery, I would miss 3 days due to travel. This may have an impact on the evaluator's perception of my professionalism.

I think I may already have decided on taking both the same day. Can anyone else chime in on what they think about this?

If your preceptor thought any less of you for completing an exam that your school requires, I would be very worried about your preceptor. I guess we have been very lucky in that all our preceptors know that anything school related trumps anything they have for us.

School comes first, especially for expendable pee-ons like third year medical students!