Just took my surgery shelf... or maybe it was OBGYN?

[pathologyDO]

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[Ismet]

The surgery shelf is like the internal medicine shelf. I don't recall a lot of OB GYN

 

[pd1112]

Just took my surgery shelf today... im not even kidding, when I left the exam room I was thinking, was that my OBGYN exam? I have yet to do my OBGYN rotation, so that exam just hit me like a ton of bricks. I had 0 appendicitis questions, and only a 2-3 gallbladders.

Is there a good curve on exams like this where the exam makers decide to make the exam about one small portion of surgery???? Anyone else have this experience with their surgery shelf being like 50% OBGYN??

You might be exaggerating.

 

[TheTruckGuy]

Just took my surgery shelf today... im not even kidding, when I left the exam room I was thinking, was that my OBGYN exam? I have yet to do my OBGYN rotation, so that exam just hit me like a ton of bricks. I had 0 appendicitis questions, and only a 2-3 gallbladders.

Is there a good curve on exams like this where the exam makers decide to make the exam about one small portion of surgery???? Anyone else have this experience with their surgery shelf being like 50% OBGYN??

I took my surgery shelf about 12 weeks ago. It certainly wasn't 50% OBGYN, but there were a lot of gynecological problems. I can't remember exactly how many, but at least 5 gyn questions. That's not including breast cancer questions. Don't recall any OB questions. There wasn't much of a curve on the exam. The percentage of questions I got correct was just two points away from my percentile.

 

[The Anhedonia]

I too felt that my surgery shelf in Jan was obgyn heavy, maybe 20%. thank goodness that was my prior rotation.

 

[pd1112]

I took my surgery shelf about 12 weeks ago. It certainly wasn't 50% OBGYN, but there were a lot of gynecological problems. I can't remember exactly how many, but at least 5 gyn questions. That's not including breast cancer questions. Don't recall any OB questions. There wasn't much of a curve on the exam. The percentage of questions I got correct was just two points away from my percentile.

There's literally no way of knowing this.

 

[aspiepremed]

You might be exaggerating.

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[TheTruckGuy]

There's literally no way of knowing this.

Our school gives us a report of our final grade in the rotation and it includes "NBME score" and "calculated percentile," as well as clinical score and OSCE and whatnot that's factored in. I just figured that my NBME score was my raw percentage correct, and calculated percentile is based off what the NBME folks tell the school my grade is curved to based on other students taking the exam at a comparable time of the year.

 

[TheTruckGuy]

I cannot know for sure, but there was a significantly large amount of breast cancer, hysterectomy, and pregnancy questions. If not 50%, I'm confident it was >>>25%. I'm not exaggerating whatsoever about the 0 appendicitis questions or the 2-3 gallbladders. I knew that stuff cold... I kept getting OBGYN questions and kept thinking to myself "ok this is alright, the gallbladders and appendicitis type questions will pop up anytime." Never happened.

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Breast is definitely high yield surgery.

 

[pd1112]

I cannot know for sure, but there was a significantly large amount of breast cancer, hysterectomy, and pregnancy questions. If not 50%, I'm confident it was >>>25%. I'm not exaggerating whatsoever about the 0 appendicitis questions or the 2-3 gallbladders. I knew that stuff cold... I kept getting OBGYN questions and kept thinking to myself "ok this is alright, the gallbladders and appendicitis type questions will pop up anytime." Never happened.

I feel completely crapped on... If I had done OBGYN before it wouldn't have been so bad

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You're confident that you had 26 questions on breast & Ob/Gyn?? That just seems crazy, but anyway, breast is general surgery; Ob/Gyns can't operate on breasts. I took it recently too & yeah some of the questions, just like some of the practice Qs, could be considered Ob/Gyn, but a lot of acute presentations in females mimic each other, so in ER/primary care you have to have them in your differential. Also, with all of the high yield review resources out there now, they can't just ask the classic Qs anymore because everyone knows them cold. I think most would agree that the steps & shelf exams are all trending away from the classic & buzzword questions.

Our school gives us a report of our final grade in the rotation and it includes "NBME score" and "calculated percentile," as well as clinical score and OSCE and whatnot that's factored in. I just figured that my NBME score was my raw percentage correct, and calculated percentile is based off what the NBME folks tell the school my grade is curved to based on other students taking the exam at a comparable time of the year.

The "NBME score" is the "equated percent correct" score that the NBME just introduced this year. It's supposed to "roughly" amount to the percentage of questions answered correctly, but is scaled & adjusted based on the difficulty of the specific form given that day. So you have a rough estimate of % correct, but have no way of knowing if it was curved or not, and if so, how much it was curved. The "percentile" score is not a curve at all. That's a true percentile (90th percentile means your score was better than 90% of test takers) which correlates to the given equated percent correct score. And while your percentile & equated percent correct score might've differed by only 2, that's mere chance because the correlation varies widely at the score extremes. For example, on the surgery shelf, 91-100 equated percent correct is 100th percentile., while 60 equated percent correct is 11th percentile. Each school can decide which number to use for calculating that portion of your grade. Anecdotally, my school used the percentile score last year, then switched to using the new equated percent correct score this year.

http://www.nbme.org/PDF/Schools/SubjectExams/Rescaling.pdf

 

[TheTruckGuy]

I think I knew what you are saying, but I guess I just equated the two in my head because, like you said you can use either score for grading. Since our school uses both for different criteria and grading, the percentile functions as a curve (unfortunately a negative curve for me quite often).

 

[TypeADissection]

If you decide to go surgery, wait until your ABSITE each year. You'll scratch your head at the random OBGYN questions that come out of the woodwork. I remember there being a lot of breast on my shelf. Coincidentally, as a general surgeon, you'll be doing a lot of breast cancer surgery and management. It's not my cup of tea personally, but it does provide a great need so take it all in stride. Congrats on taking your shelf and moving forward in your clinical years.

 

[Derv]

I had a lot of OBGYN on my Surgery AND my medicine shelf exams!