IM In Service Exam

[BerlinDude]

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Hey all,
I recently matched into internal medicine and plan on ultimately going into cardiology. I have about 2 months open before graduation and thought of familiarizing myself with the in-service exam. What is the best way to go about that? Any favorite review texts, question banks, sample exams? Is it better to prepare for USMLE Step 3 and get that out of the way or focus on the in service training exam?

 

[rd31]

omg no

 

[path or no path]

Hey all,
I recently matched into internal medicine and plan on ultimately going into cardiology. I have about 2 months open before graduation and thought of familiarizing myself with the in-service exam. What is the best way to go about that? Any favorite review texts, question banks, sample exams? Is it better to prepare for USMLE Step 3 and get that out of the way or focus on the in service training exam?

I used UWorld for IM Boards to study for the inservice. I thought it was helpful. MKSAP is too basic.

 

[PlutoBoy]

Don't waste your time preparing too much for it. Assuming you read up on your patient's everyday and pay attention in the wards you will ace it. I never studied for it and always scored
>90 percentile FWIW.

 

[Trogghunter]

It's also used to track your progress and your program won't put you through board prep courses unless you score below the 15th lowest percentile for the national average, for people of your year. If you start out with 90s percentile then you better keep that up.

 

[IM2GI]

Don't cheat yourself of the opportunity to see where you stack up/how prepared you are for the boards.

 

[flipmd]

My thinking for the in service is, make sure you don't prepare for the first one, because if you do well on the first, and then get busy with residency and don't study for the rest and your scores go down, it's a bad 'trend'. Don't sweat it. Also, you're not supposed to study for the in-service anyways -- I never did.

 

[path or no path]

My thinking for the in service is, make sure you don't prepare for the first one, because if you do well on the first, and then get busy with residency and don't study for the rest and your scores go down, it's a bad 'trend'. Don't sweat it. Also, you're not supposed to study for the in-service anyways -- I never did.

That only works if you don't study and do great. If you do crappy, you'll get on your program director's $hit list and will have to remediate.

 

[efex101]

dude or dudette, get step 3 out of the way NOW if you can then focus on the in service exam.

 

[FreakofMeds]

Agree with the above. Don't study for the first in-service. If you have glaring deficiencies, use that to direct your learning over the next year, rinse and repeat until you graduate. The idea of the in-service to test your day to day fund of knowledge, not how much you can cram.