- Joined
- May 30, 2004
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I just completed my Step 3 exam this past weekend. I don't feel well about my performance at all. It was a difficult exam. Maybe more difficult than step 1 (at least I had enough time to think through the questions on that one)
I spent 2 months preparing for the exam. I mostly spent about 3 hours once I got home in the evening reading Crush or doing qbanks questions. That all I did. Once I read through Crush Step 3 once, I started USMLEWorld. I completed 100% of the questions and got 58% of them correct as a cumulative.
After taking Step 3, I am not sure if UW was even a good source for the exam. The vignettes tend to be much longer in Step 3 and they have those 2-4 part questions that once you complete the previous question, you are no longer able to go back to change your answer once you advance to the next question. UW didn't have those restrictions. Also, UW had no images for the qbank questions while Step 3 has many including those with audio.
First day:
The first day I felt really horrible by the end of the day. I had a lot of OBGYN, pulmonary, cardiology, and peds questions (listed in order of descending amount). My biggest problem is that I did not have enough time to read and think through a whole gang of questions. For at least 2-3 questions per block, I either quickly skimmed or just randomly chose an answer. It was so frustrating to read those long vignettes. There was no block where I just felt really good about after finishing it.
Second Day:
Although I felt better than previous day regarding the blocks, I still had to randomly answer 1-2 questions per block. It seem as no matter how hard I tried to read fast or think through the questions efficiently, there simply was not enough time to provide adequate thought on many of the questions. If I tried to think too much on any question, it seems as if I paid for it by running out of time. I was forced to pick up a strategy involving skipping and marking all biostat questions and saving them for the end of the block. Thankfully, there was not many of them because I never got the chance to read through about 75% of them. I though I could make up by a good CCS performance but even that caused me to nervously fumble through it considering I placed so much weight on it to give me a fighting chance of passing the exam.
CCS:
It was really too bad but there was some situations that I really had to think for too long to recall what I am supposed to do for the situation.
Case 1st: An emergency cardiac case. I knew what do when she first walked in the door and how to treat her problem for the most part. I did everything right and was surprised when I went right into counseling the patient and the update told me that she was too ill too cooperate and that she still had chest pain. I was thinking "what in the hell I am supposed to do no! She is supposed to be getting better. I placed the right consults. There was only one possible solution that I could think of which was invasive so I chose it and the case ended. Not sure what that meant.
Case 2. An emergency cardiac case. I did the right set up and the right procedure with improved her symptoms but she still complained of pain but there was an obvious reason to have the pain even though I gave her good pain meds and did a procedure that saved her from an immediate life-threatening illness. I even placed the right consults. The case ended early without me getting a chance to admit her to the hospital.
Case 3. An OBYGYN case. I felt I managed it well and the patients symptoms completely resolved. Case ended in maybe 5 to 8 minutes.
Case 4. An endocrine case. I felt I managed it well and it was very straight-forward. She improved in the case ended in maybe 10 minutes.
Case 5. A psyche case. So much was going on with this lady but I stuck with the big picture and she improved. The case ended in about 15 minutes.
Case 6. An Heme/onc case. I felt my initial work up an decisions were excellent but once I found out what the illness was, I picked the wrong medication and was too aggressive with some of the treatment. I never even found out what was the outcome of the case or got a patient update. I figured I bombed it.
Case 7: An ID case. It was straight-forward and I managed it quickly and correctly save for leaving out a couple of standard studies but the patient improved and the case ended in about 5-10 minutes.
Case 8. An Heme/Onc case. I found out what was wrong quickly with the patient quickly. I placed the patient on the right med to treat the problem but failed to do something very crucial and that was to D/C the med that was causing the problem. I suspected a secondary problem and was awaiting for some crucial lab results to get better insight on what to do from there but I screwed up by not d/cing not d/cing a reading that I ordered for every hour while I was running out of time. I never found out the secondary issue. This was the only case that the clock ran out on.
Case 9. I feel so bad and ashamed from screwing this case up that I won't go into much detail. I will just say that I knew what to do exactly every step of the way but I made one huge critical mistake. I chose the wrong form of the medication that he needed. This mistake, I am almost certain, negated every thing else I did right in the case. This is mainly because the standards subsequent treatment depends on that the initial medication form was ordered correctly.
I spent 2 months preparing for the exam. I mostly spent about 3 hours once I got home in the evening reading Crush or doing qbanks questions. That all I did. Once I read through Crush Step 3 once, I started USMLEWorld. I completed 100% of the questions and got 58% of them correct as a cumulative.
After taking Step 3, I am not sure if UW was even a good source for the exam. The vignettes tend to be much longer in Step 3 and they have those 2-4 part questions that once you complete the previous question, you are no longer able to go back to change your answer once you advance to the next question. UW didn't have those restrictions. Also, UW had no images for the qbank questions while Step 3 has many including those with audio.
First day:
The first day I felt really horrible by the end of the day. I had a lot of OBGYN, pulmonary, cardiology, and peds questions (listed in order of descending amount). My biggest problem is that I did not have enough time to read and think through a whole gang of questions. For at least 2-3 questions per block, I either quickly skimmed or just randomly chose an answer. It was so frustrating to read those long vignettes. There was no block where I just felt really good about after finishing it.
Second Day:
Although I felt better than previous day regarding the blocks, I still had to randomly answer 1-2 questions per block. It seem as no matter how hard I tried to read fast or think through the questions efficiently, there simply was not enough time to provide adequate thought on many of the questions. If I tried to think too much on any question, it seems as if I paid for it by running out of time. I was forced to pick up a strategy involving skipping and marking all biostat questions and saving them for the end of the block. Thankfully, there was not many of them because I never got the chance to read through about 75% of them. I though I could make up by a good CCS performance but even that caused me to nervously fumble through it considering I placed so much weight on it to give me a fighting chance of passing the exam.
CCS:
It was really too bad but there was some situations that I really had to think for too long to recall what I am supposed to do for the situation.
Case 1st: An emergency cardiac case. I knew what do when she first walked in the door and how to treat her problem for the most part. I did everything right and was surprised when I went right into counseling the patient and the update told me that she was too ill too cooperate and that she still had chest pain. I was thinking "what in the hell I am supposed to do no! She is supposed to be getting better. I placed the right consults. There was only one possible solution that I could think of which was invasive so I chose it and the case ended. Not sure what that meant.
Case 2. An emergency cardiac case. I did the right set up and the right procedure with improved her symptoms but she still complained of pain but there was an obvious reason to have the pain even though I gave her good pain meds and did a procedure that saved her from an immediate life-threatening illness. I even placed the right consults. The case ended early without me getting a chance to admit her to the hospital.
Case 3. An OBYGYN case. I felt I managed it well and the patients symptoms completely resolved. Case ended in maybe 5 to 8 minutes.
Case 4. An endocrine case. I felt I managed it well and it was very straight-forward. She improved in the case ended in maybe 10 minutes.
Case 5. A psyche case. So much was going on with this lady but I stuck with the big picture and she improved. The case ended in about 15 minutes.
Case 6. An Heme/onc case. I felt my initial work up an decisions were excellent but once I found out what the illness was, I picked the wrong medication and was too aggressive with some of the treatment. I never even found out what was the outcome of the case or got a patient update. I figured I bombed it.
Case 7: An ID case. It was straight-forward and I managed it quickly and correctly save for leaving out a couple of standard studies but the patient improved and the case ended in about 5-10 minutes.
Case 8. An Heme/Onc case. I found out what was wrong quickly with the patient quickly. I placed the patient on the right med to treat the problem but failed to do something very crucial and that was to D/C the med that was causing the problem. I suspected a secondary problem and was awaiting for some crucial lab results to get better insight on what to do from there but I screwed up by not d/cing not d/cing a reading that I ordered for every hour while I was running out of time. I never found out the secondary issue. This was the only case that the clock ran out on.
Case 9. I feel so bad and ashamed from screwing this case up that I won't go into much detail. I will just say that I knew what to do exactly every step of the way but I made one huge critical mistake. I chose the wrong form of the medication that he needed. This mistake, I am almost certain, negated every thing else I did right in the case. This is mainly because the standards subsequent treatment depends on that the initial medication form was ordered correctly.
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(banana=USMLE)
(thats what its all about)
