Need major help with pharm for step....

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jack.jaret

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My Uworld percentage in pharm is abysmal. I get 1 out of every 4 questions right. I found other sources helpful (sketchy for micro, pathoma for pathology), but I just can't seem to figure out how to study pharm. I have a month until my exam 🙁

Any advice?
 
FA, SketchyPharm (not the greatest, but its definitely helped), and flash cards. I detest flashcards, but I bit the bullet beings I've struggled with pharm (its taught atrociously at my school) and its made a significant improvement, both in class and on step practice questions.
 
Yeah, I'm pretty desperate on pharm too. I tried using picmonic and it's okay, it's not really the greatest but it does solidify my memory a little better than just FA as long as I keep the illustrations straight.
 
Use FA as an outline and put aside time every day to go over a section or two. Do it at the same time every day and soon you'll identify the stuff you really need to work on, whether it's antibiotics, antiarrhythmics, autonomics, etc. Also, go to quizlet and do a search for pharm decks. There are hundreds of them out there. Put 'USMLE' or 'First Aid' in some of your searches and see what you can find. It'll save you time from having to make your own decks.
 
I used Pharmcards (you can find them on amazon). Every time I got something wrong, I hand-wrote a copy of the card because writing things out by hand really helps me remember things. I just did a little bit every day during my study time.
 
kaplan pharm videos are incredible, lionel is incredible - no other words could describe them
MeatTornado said:
I second the Kaplan videos suggestion! Lionel Raymond is FANTASTIC!


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TheShaker said:
Wait, what? 4 pharm questions in all 7 blocks? I thought pharm was 20% of the test?
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Legit only 4 that required real knowledge. Others were only part of the question or just the most obvious question like worst side effect of statin - and trust me pharm is my weakness and everything but those 4 were gimmes. However, all test are different. Keep preparing for the worst, lionel pharm is good but really making online quizzes/notecards and doing them every day is what you gotta do. Pharm more than other topics requires brute force.
 
I think pharm has the potential to be "gimmies" if you study hard enough. You just sit there and memorize. I guess my issue is finding a good source. I'm just now hearing about Kaplan pharm - I had never heard about it before this thread. What are yalls thoughts about it? Sounds like you guys like it.
 
You could put yourself through school for your first two degrees/career by working at hospital pharmacies as a pharmacy technician for 9 years. Unless you live in a state where they're requiring Pharmacy Techs to be certified and go to tech school for a year or two. When I did it you just showed up and it was all OTJ training. I promise you, after you've done that for 9 years, you'll know far more than anyone needs to know about pharmaceuticals. Of course, it might have the unwanted side-effect of making you want change careers not long into your first career, when you realize that this medicine stuff is a whole lot more fun than this computer engineering stuff.
 
NEVERSURRENDERMD said:
You could put yourself through school for your first two degrees/career by working at hospital pharmacies as a pharmacy technician for 9 years. Unless you live in a state where they're requiring Pharmacy Techs to be certified and go to tech school for a year or two. When I did it you just showed up and it was all OTJ training. I promise you, after you've done that for 9 years, you'll know far more than anyone needs to know about pharmaceuticals. Of course, it might have the unwanted side-effect of making you want change careers not long into your first career, when you realize that this medicine stuff is a whole lot more fun than this computer engineering stuff.
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SketchyPharm is no where even close to the micro videos. They're about 30 minutes long, include 5+ drugs frequently and the pictures are too cluttered to remember everything. They do however do a great job explaining the physiology of the drug target before doing the drug.

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tennischamp822 said:
Has anyone used Sketchy Pharm???
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I've used it some, and I'm a fan. I don't like it as much as Sketchy Micro-- there's a lot more going on and the videos are a lot longer-- but they're also usually cramming a whole drug class into each video, unlike the micro videos that tend to be one bug or just a couple. I think they do a good job explaining the mechanisms, but it's not as good as the Micro version for brute force memorization.
 
pd1112 said:
FWIW UWorld makes pharm much harder than it is on the actual test.
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You never know what you'll get. I just took the actual test this month, and let's just say it asked about some drugs that were pretty low-yield (still in FA, but I had NEVER seen them come up in practice questions).
 
LaurenMD said:
You never know what you'll get. I just took the actual test this month, and let's just say it asked about some drugs that were pretty low-yield (still in FA, but I had NEVER seen them come up in practice questions).
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That's true but it doesn't really contradict what I said.
 
tennischamp822 said:
Has anyone used Sketchy Pharm???
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Yeah, it was pretty disappointing. The stories and pictures are just too hectic for me to incorporate into visual memory. In addition, the stories aren't as well written and some of the narrators are fairly annoying.
 
I agree. Sketchy Pharm had way too much going on, but I'm a huge fan of Sketchy Micro.

I've heard a few things about the Lange cards - what are yalls thoughts? I scored a 0/6 in the pharm section from my last question set (including missing a question that 91% of people got correct). Getting kind of desperate now 🙁
 
jack.jaret said:
I agree. Sketchy Pharm had way too much going on, but I'm a huge fan of Sketchy Micro.

I've heard a few things about the Lange cards - what are yalls thoughts? I scored a 0/6 in the pharm section from my last question set (including missing a question that 91% of people got correct). Getting kind of desperate now 🙁
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FA, Lange Pharmcards, and Kaplan videos are enough to give you sufficient mastery of pharm. Anything not contained therein can't realistically be studied for.

BTW, while anecdotes of "my test had [X] questions about [X] subject are interesting, they're irrelevant. You need to learn every subject as well as you can.
 
OrangeOrange said:
Content-wise, FA is all you need - as for how to memorize all that stuff, Anki is the only way
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I've never used Anki before actually but I've heard great things. Are there any already made decks? I don't really know how to search for them using Anki
 
jack.jaret said:
I've never used Anki before actually but I've heard great things. Are there any already made decks? I don't really know how to search for them using Anki
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I prefer DIY cards, but yes, once you make an account on ankiweb you can search for decks that other users have made and shared. Brosencephalon is one such user. Plus other people have refined and updated those cards
 
I'm a pharmacist and I miss several/many uworld pharm questions. Lots of details I've forgotten. I agree with the others and memorize the info in First Aid pharm sections. Master the high yield sections like diuretics, antibiotics, cholesterol drugs, seizure drugs and cardio drugs to start. At least seems like alot of my pharm questions came from there.
 
Stagg737 said:
How many videos are there for Kaplan and about how long are they? I've heard Lio is amazing, I didn't realize he did the Kaplan videos though.
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There are a lot videos... I would say over 120+ if I have to guess... the majority of them are short, others are 30+ mins or so. If you did not watch them during M2, I think it might be too late to do that now, but you can still watch some of them, especially subjects that you have some weakness on. He also gives feedback of what previous step1 test takers say what they saw on the exam... Not sure whether that is legal or not! My school uses NBME and I always (I mean always) spot many things that he emphasizes that people should know for step1... My gut feeling is that he probably has some insider knowledge on these pharm board questions, but he uses the trick 'my previous students who took step1 said this is important'.

On the topic that I watch his videos, I feel like I am hearing inside my head his beautiful French accent while taking these exams.😛
 
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