New clinical skills test for USMLE to be added in 2004

[Hopkins2010]

I guess a lot of you already know this by now, but its pretty much official that the USMLE will have a clinical skills test requirement for all US grads starting with the class of 2005.

It says that most people will take it late in the 3rd year or 4th year. When do people take the Step 2?

<a href="http://www.usmle.org/news/newscse.htm" target="_blank">USMLE web site</a>

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[doepug]

Most people at Hopkins take Step 2 in the spring of 4th year, since there's nothing else to do. Most of us finish ~6 months early, so there's plenty of time to take the exam.

As an MD/PhD student, you'll probably take Step 2 after returning to the wards, umpteen years from now.

Cheers,
doepug

 

[wfu2005]

The AMA has recently requested this to be put on hold until they do more studying due to the fact that it will cost a grand and there will be very few testing centers, meaning if you don't live in the city that has the centers, you might be dropping a few more hundreds to get there and stay in a hotel. I think at least the class of 2005 will get away without having to take it, at least that's the word at our school.

 

[LoneSEAL]

•••quote:•••Originally posted by wfu2005:
•The AMA has recently requested this to be put on hold until they do more studying due to the fact that it will cost a grand and there will be very few testing centers, meaning if you don't live in the city that has the centers, you might be dropping a few more hundreds to get there and stay in a hotel. I think at least the class of 2005 will get away without having to take it, at least that's the word at our school.•••••Yup, I'm seriously praying that the financial difficulties of the plan is resolved later, not sooner. As it stands now, the freakin exam is around $950 dollars per student. For those students that don't live near the 9 designated test centers, they'll have to chip in transportation and lodging costs.

 

[Reavill]

Yeah I?m really hoping that I don?t have to take this exam. I don?t really know what the value is of having a national exam that is going to cost people thousands of bucks. I know that we already have a difficult CSE at Wayne Sate near the end of third year?what about everyone else? Why don?t they leave this part of the medical education up to the school to teach you and let us keep our thousand dollars?

People here at WSU usually take Step 2 sometime in the early part of 4th year, usually after you complete EM. My roommate is going to take one of his months off (in a couple of weeks) in order to study for it and complete his residency applications.

 

[fourthyear]

my school also has a Clinical Skills Exam already and it seems pretty pointless to most of us. The administrators of the exam are all proud that their results correlate so well wiht real clinical performance, bragging that those few who fail usually were the same students who had difficulty throughout their clinical evaluations third year...so why do we need a standard exam when we are already graded every day on the same thing???

 

[Darth Vader]

Originally posted by fourthyear
my school also has a Clinical Skills Exam already and it seems pretty pointless to most of us. The administrators of the exam are all proud that their results correlate so well wiht real clinical performance, bragging that those few who fail usually were the same students who had difficulty throughout their clinical evaluations third year...so why do we need a standard exam when we are already graded every day on the same thing???

I actually find those results very surprising, considering how little hands-on clinical skills actually contribute to our grades. I've heard that you can actually go all 2 clinical yrs without anyone actually observing you take a history and physical, they only know what you present to them.

 

[Andrew_Doan]

Step 2 is not needed for residency applications. I figured it can only hurt and not help. I took Step 2 in the middle of my intern year! Then I took Step 3 six months later.

 

[Amy]

Just out of curiosity, where are those 9 designated test centers?