Official Surgery Shelf Exam Discussion Thread

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Pinkertinkle said:
Used kaplan pestana videos half heartedly, nms surgery casefiles, u world, read thru step up to surgery. Got 83.
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Step up to Surgery and casefiles were pretty useless. I was disappointed, especially in Step Up given how good the medicine book is
 
got my score this week 85 raw , 94%ile

did Pestana Notes the night before (second go)
did Kaplan Qbook twice
did usmleworld once
IGNORED Pre-Test - too strange
IGNORED Lange Surgery - way too detailed
it definitely helped doing medicine first
 
well, give yall's input on this because i am 100% going to be relying on pestana. and do Qbook kaplan. Thats it. for some reason I am dead tired on this rotation and can't believe how people read lawrence or schwartz. I mean I barely sleep 5 hours on good days...

the above post gives me some hope...I hope
 
Reff said:
got my score this week 85 raw , 94%ile

did Pestana Notes the night before (second go)
did Kaplan Qbook twice
did usmleworld once
IGNORED Pre-Test - too strange
IGNORED Lange Surgery - way too detailed
it definitely helped doing medicine first
Click to expand...


second this,

but no Qbook + NMS case files ~85%.

87 rawr.
 
I read through almost all of Step Up, not sure how useful it was. There is just a ton of info and I felt like I was on information overload going through it.

Read through NMS case book, I definitely recommend this book.

Pestana notes (76 pager) x 2, with the second time being the few days before the exam. This was the single best resource for the shelf in my opinion.

I did about 200 of the GI questions in Lange, mostly trivia and not worth doing. I looked at Pre Test for about 10 minutes and decided that it was worthless...it was.

Got 87 raw (96th percentile)
 
Any advice for those of us who will be having surgery as our first rotation?
 
Took the surgery shelf last month, got 91 raw. I used the Kaplan Step 2 Notes (extremely good), NMS casefiles (somewhat helpful) and USMLE World Surgery questions (quite good as well). I wouldn't spend too much time on the subspecialties, since the questions I got were either stuff that was covered by learning trauma, or was so esoteric that I couldn't find the answers even on Google after leaving the test. I walked out of the test not really sure how I did so don't feel bad if you don't feel like you did well.

There were definitely some medicine questions on the test. But those of you taking surgery early in the year before taking medicine might be able to survive based on remembered knowledge from Step 1.

Take home point: I can't recommend the Kaplan Step 2 notes enough... its concise but incredibly high yield. You can probably answer 80-90% of the questions on the test based on the info in there alone.
 
Secondary Gain said:
Took the surgery shelf last month, got 91 raw. I used the Kaplan Step 2 Notes (extremely good), NMS casefiles (somewhat helpful) and USMLE World Surgery questions (quite good as well). I wouldn't spend too much time on the subspecialties, since the questions I got were either stuff that was covered by learning trauma, or was so esoteric that I couldn't find the answers even on Google after leaving the test. I walked out of the test not really sure how I did so don't feel bad if you don't feel like you did well.

There were definitely some medicine questions on the test. But those of you taking surgery early in the year before taking medicine might be able to survive based on remembered knowledge from Step 1.

Take home point: I can't recommend the Kaplan Step 2 notes enough... its concise but incredibly high yield. You can probably answer 80-90% of the questions on the test based on the info in there alone.
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My shelf is on Friday, so I'm not sure yet, but I can say that the Kaplan notes line up very well with UW questions. I'm a fan so far.
 
I have heard a lot of people say Kaplan is great for surgery but what about the other shelves?
 
Doctor Bagel said:
My shelf is on Friday, so I'm not sure yet, but I can say that the Kaplan notes line up very well with UW questions. I'm a fan so far.
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Yea they line up eerily well... for a while I was worried that the UW questions were written based on the Kaplan notes!
 
Even if the UW questions were based off kaplan, it still works out because they are both dead-on. I did kaplan notes/Costanza, UW, and blueprints. score >90. I did have medicine first, which helped.
 
Anyone use "Surgery Clerkship Guide?"

Also is NMS Case Files better than Case Files: Surgery ?
 
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Almost forgot this thread existed. Got scores back 4 days ago or so - 85 raw
I probably felt the most unsure coming out of surgery shelf. couple of things probably contributed: I did not study too much, and I was burnt out from work/whole year.

I used pestana the last week x 2 and then skimmed NMS casebook. Pestana were helpful though their utility is a bit exaggerated. NMS was also ok. Thing is this shelf is just random. I thought medicine was MUCH easier. Best recommendation would be to work really hard on the floor. The shelf is "the surgical management of inpatients."

working hard on clerkship knowing patient management + books I mentioned I guess = good grade i think. didn't know any good books for surgery.
 
I just purchased NMS Surgery and NMS Case Files. Are these 2 books enough to prepare me for the Shelf and Step 2?
 
Reporting back in, too. Don't know my raw yet, but my percentile on the shelf was pretty high, so I guess I did something right, even though I thought I pretty much missed everything the day of the exam. So yeah, I'd vote for Pestana Kaplan review, NMS casefiles (and full text when you have time -- I read about half of it) and USMLEWorld. I did Pretest, but I still don't feel like it was very representative of the test.
 
Cliff Huxtable said:
I just purchased NMS Surgery and NMS Case Files. Are these 2 books enough to prepare me for the Shelf and Step 2?
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More than enough, I doubt you can use both in the time you will have to read. I would stick with just one of those books (choose which one you like, they are both sufficient) and throw in Pestana for a more high yield but non-comprehensive overview.
 
tfom08 said:
More than enough, I doubt you can use both in the time you will have to read. I would stick with just one of those books (choose which one you like, they are both sufficient) and throw in Pestana for a more high yield but non-comprehensive overview.
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Cool, thanks!
 
forgive my ignorance...but for usmleworld...is that CK Step 2?

as well... has anybody else used CK step 2 for other rotations?

also if anyone has the audio verion for pestan..can you please please e-mail it to me @ [email protected] 🙂

thanks!
 
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Yes, UWorld, UW, Usmleworld all = Usmle world Step 2 CK question bank.

I used UWorld for every NBME I wrote, and found the questions to be uniformly useful for all rotations. I recommend them highly.

Cheers.
 
biznass said:
forgive my ignorance...but for usmleworld...is that CK Step 2?

as well... has anybody else used CK step 2 for other rotations?

also if anyone has the audio verion for pestan..can you please please e-mail it to me @ [email protected] 🙂

thanks!
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Only one person in the thread has admitted to having the Pestana audio and won't share so good luck finding it. Google doesn't turn up anything.
 
Is NMS Surgery good for Step 2? I've heard it's too detailed for the shelf but what about Step 2?

I already own NMS Casefiles. Surgery is my first rotation.
 
Any concerns that the NMS Casebook may be outdated? It's from 2002 . . .
 
I asked the exact same question; it is in some ways (a specific example comes to mind re: inclusion criteria for carotid endarectomy) but for the most part there haven't been huge advances in the managment of cholycystitis or appendicitis in the last 7 or so years. So no, I wouldn't worry about it in regards to the shelf.

I used the NMS Casebook plus Pastena plus UWorld and wrote a 92% raw, so don't worry about it.

Cheers.
 
What is the title for the pestana book? I did an amazon search and came up with a ton of Kaplan books etc. Not sure which one people are talking about!
 
It's not a book. (Although he might have a book too.) They are the Pestana notes. You can find them on Google. I think there may be a link on this thread somewhere if it wasn't removed.
 
wiki23 said:
What is the title for the pestana book? I did an amazon search and came up with a ton of Kaplan books etc. Not sure which one people are talking about!
Click to expand...

Pestana is the author of the Kaplan Step 2 ck surgery review book. The 08-09 version is slightly updated compared to the 05-06. Not sure about where to buy it.
 
OK got done taking it today.
what I used:
Uworld
NMS casebook x2, and NMS text for trauma, GI, breast did questions at end of text chapters
Step up questions & next step at the back-didnt read the book though
pretest for gi preop/postop & trauma
some Lawrence online questions
PEstana x2

PESTANA NMS casebook, & Uworld would have sufficed. NMS text is good if you have an oral test (we do) or want to go into surgery, a good compendium for the case book, lawrence is too verbose for my tastes, although some of my friends read it. 1st aid is way to dense as is Step Up, you might as well read NMS text or Lawrence. Pretest is good for leafing through when you run out of world questions but not that high yield

The Shelf-surgical management, this is not a medicine test, its a what do you do next test--what will localize the disease process, what step in Trauma Resuscitation, I had a few day x what is it, XRay of Fx, but nothing that you would need to bust out netters for. I do think having medicine 1st (this was my last shelf) helped, but I also had 4 peds questions and a few obgyn questions as well. I will post my score when I get it

to reiterate NMS casebook, pestana & Uworld are enough to almost guarantee a pass, and how hard you work, extra reading & understanding can get you an Honors

good luck & bye bye 3rd year
 
I will start by saying that I am almost 5 years removed from this test. However, I used the "Blueprints and Pretest" approach to all my shelfs and usually did well.

Seeing the negative reviews of Pretest, I picked up a copy from the student library and started flipping through, 12th edition. Honestly, I looked pretty good. It explained all of the answers, seemed relatively accurate, etc.

What things about pretest did you guys dislike? After taking the test, did you find that it was inaccurate? I know it's hard to truly recall these details. I'm trying to decide what to tell the students when they ask me for shelf advice.


Also, as a side note, do you guys feel that the quality of teaching you received on the wards affected your score? I know that when I was in med school, my friends always felt the smarter move was to duck out and head to the library to go through review books. My argument was always that the majority of what we need to know was obtained during clinical work.
 
Hey, how shelf relevant are each of the following subspecialty topics: Vascular, Neurosurgery, Peds, ENT, Urology, Ortho, Plastics, Transplant

I'm trying to figure out what's worth investing time into at this point. My initial impression is that vascular is relatively high yield whereas peds, ENT, transplant, and plastics are probably low yield. Would you guys expect more than 1-2 questions from each of those topics? I'm guessing a brief look through recall may be all that's worthwhile...
 
I just took it today. I thought it was hard to read through passages that long, but all-in-all I don't think it was too difficult. I'm not sure how I did, but I'm predicting I did really well (especially considering this was my first shelf exam).

I used NMS Surgery as my primary resource (the big one, not the smaller casebook). I bought Surgical Recall, but didn't really use it (waste of time and money in my opinion). I could see it being useful in preparing for pimping, but I've found that enough doctors these days pimp you on more in-depth knowledge than what you'll find in Surgical Recall (like "why do we go through all the trouble of doing this Roux En Y procedure rather than just a direct anastamosis to the duodenum?). Just my perspective.

I did have NMS Casebook (read halfway X1), Pestana (read halfway X1), Old Kaplan Notes (didn't read) but the vast majority of my studying was from NMS Surgery. After taking the shelf I think NMS Surgery is sufficient to help you do really well (though I guess I'll have to see my score in a few days). Even for the questions I wasn't sure about I know the information was in NMS Surgery. Since it is a bigger book than some are willing to tackle for a clerkship, it does take commitment. It is not a book you will want to read straight through as quickly as possible as many times as possible. I recommend pacing yourself and reading in-depth as much as possible and shoot for memorizing as much detail as possible short-term and then going back and repeating once (or twice or three times if you have enough time). It is all key useful information so you won't feel like you are wasting your time by going slow and memorizing all of it.

I tend to be a minimalist, so if I could do it again I would focus 100% on NMS Surgery and just forget about everything else.
 
I used Pestana, Casefiles and USMLE world questions. I got all the way through these resources. Also, I read a lot of Surgical recall, and the ABSITE review by Fiser. I mostly read the latter two books prior to lectures, rounds, OR, or other pimping times. I scored 92 raw, 99% percentile. I think the UW questions were the most useful item for the shelf. Case files is kinda weak.
 
SeminoleFan3 said:
Doesn't it take about a month to get shelf scores back?
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Not according to my fellow classmates. A friend of mine took the Family Medicine shelf exam and he knew his score just a few days later. Maybe Surgery is different? I don't know. It's also possible that some schools grade their own shelf exams rather than send them back to NBME for grading. I don't see how else they could get such quick turn-around (maybe that's what my school does).
 
ropeadope1983 said:
Not according to my fellow classmates. A friend of mine took the Family Medicine shelf exam and he knew his score just a few days later. Maybe Surgery is different? I don't know. It's also possible that some schools grade their own shelf exams rather than send them back to NBME for grading. I don't see how else they could get such quick turn-around (maybe that's what my school does).
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I can't believe the NBME would allow schools to grade it themselves because there's a lot of statistical crap they do. I know someone in my school waited more than a month last year for his surgery shelf grade. Maybe it depends on when you take it.
 
ropeadope1983 said:
Not according to my fellow classmates. A friend of mine took the Family Medicine shelf exam and he knew his score just a few days later. Maybe Surgery is different? I don't know. It's also possible that some schools grade their own shelf exams rather than send them back to NBME for grading. I don't see how else they could get such quick turn-around (maybe that's what my school does).
Click to expand...
There's no way the NBME lets schools grade the exams themselves. You're not allowed to break the seal on the exams until right before passing them out, and then they are overnighted back to the NBME day of. Schools have to follow the procedure to a T or they risk losing their right to distribute the exams. I also know someone in my school who writes for the NBME and he has an extremely strict procedure to follow as well. He can't take the test questions from his office, and has to overnight them back via FedEx. It's a lot like chain of custody for blood EtOH in a DWI case, for example.
 
just got my shelf score back. 95. very surprised, it was my first clinical rotation shelf and i thought very hard/time was an issue for me. I used FA Surgery, which was not rated high on most sites I read, but I liked it and thought it was a good way to see lots of topics in a rotation that occupies a huge amount of time. I also read NMS casefiles 2x, which was great. I just felt like I had issues retaining information in that format because it sort of jumps around to give different versions of the same case. Pestena was money. Read it 3x, including night before the test. Please do yourself a favor and read this, paying close attention to what he says about how to pick the right answer for the TEST and not what you may do in the real world. Finally, I read Abernathy's surgical secrets cover to cover. This was not a good use of time because its not the best presentation. It did help with some random pimping, but overall I didn't think it helped. However, the urology/nutrition/surgical physiology stuff was awesome and well done. Its also worth looking at if you have time (unlikely) and want to go in depth on something. My school uses Lawrence. Never touched it except for the CCM chapter, because I thought they would test more about pressors and stuff. False. CCM is HY, but more so for fluid management. I could not find a good source of questions. Did PreTest, thought it was moderately useful only because I usually split my time between reading and questions. You can also access the online questions for the Lawrence book. Some of the answers are incorrect or written poorly. Did not use Lange, heard mixed reviews. As for the actual test. I finished with less then five minutes left and rushed through the last 5-10 questions. Start with the last fifteen questions, they are easier but have 10-15 choices so you can get stuck knowing the answer but waste time finding it. Vignettes are long, save yourself and skim/find what the question is asking or you wont finish in time. Not as trauma heavy as people had told me. I had lots of urology and orthopedics. Very little if any plastics. Not much that I remember being out of left field, mostly just challenging questions about next step in management (most of the choices will be done, so you have to pick the most urgent or useful) or knowing whats surgical vs not surgical or emergent vs. elective procedures. Good luck.
 
hoya2gatormd said:
just got my shelf score back. 95. very surprised, it was my first clinical rotation shelf and i thought very hard/time was an issue for me. I used FA Surgery, which was not rated high on most sites I read, but I liked it and thought it was a good way to see lots of topics in a rotation that occupies a huge amount of time. I also read NMS casefiles 2x, which was great. I just felt like I had issues retaining information in that format because it sort of jumps around to give different versions of the same case. Pestena was money. Read it 3x, including night before the test. Please do yourself a favor and read this, paying close attention to what he says about how to pick the right answer for the TEST and not what you may do in the real world. Finally, I read Abernathy's surgical secrets cover to cover. This was not a good use of time because its not the best presentation. It did help with some random pimping, but overall I didn't think it helped. However, the urology/nutrition/surgical physiology stuff was awesome and well done. Its also worth looking at if you have time (unlikely) and want to go in depth on something. My school uses Lawrence. Never touched it except for the CCM chapter, because I thought they would test more about pressors and stuff. False. CCM is HY, but more so for fluid management. I could not find a good source of questions. Did PreTest, thought it was moderately useful only because I usually split my time between reading and questions. You can also access the online questions for the Lawrence book. Some of the answers are incorrect or written poorly. Did not use Lange, heard mixed reviews. As for the actual test. I finished with less then five minutes left and rushed through the last 5-10 questions. Start with the last fifteen questions, they are easier but have 10-15 choices so you can get stuck knowing the answer but waste time finding it. Vignettes are long, save yourself and skim/find what the question is asking or you wont finish in time. Not as trauma heavy as people had told me. I had lots of urology and orthopedics. Very little if any plastics. Not much that I remember being out of left field, mostly just challenging questions about next step in management (most of the choices will be done, so you have to pick the most urgent or useful) or knowing whats surgical vs not surgical or emergent vs. elective procedures. Good luck.
Click to expand...

How long ago did you take it?
 
SeminoleFan3 said:
I can't believe the NBME would allow schools to grade it themselves because there's a lot of statistical crap they do. I know someone in my school waited more than a month last year for his surgery shelf grade. Maybe it depends on when you take it.
Click to expand...

The school can pay to have the exams graded more quickly. Even with the regular grading service, if it took a month, it is more likely that your school took awhile to release the score than the score really taking a month from NBME. The express grading time seems to be right around a week, sometimes a little faster.
 
tfom08 said:
The school can pay to have the exams graded more quickly. Even with the regular grading service, if it took a month, it is more likely that your school took awhile to release the score than the score really taking a month from NBME. The express grading time seems to be right around a week, sometimes a little faster.
Click to expand...

This makes sense to me.

I wasn't saying "yes, this is how it is, NBME lets my school grade shelf exams". I don't know how they do it, nor do I care enough to take the time out of my day researching it like others on this thread apparently do. We'll all get our scores when they come and that's the way it is, so get over it.

All I know is my friend received his score within a week when people from other schools say it takes a month.
 
As promised. Took it last Friday and got my score back today:

78 raw, 81 percentile.

I'm very happy with this and I think there's a very good chance I'll honor Surgery. This was my first 3rd year clerkship. I didn't use any practice questions, except for halfway through Pastana in the last few days before the exam. I relied mostly on NMS Surgery. If I could do it all over again I would study only NMS Surgery until a week before the shelf. In the final week I would have then studied only Pastana's notes and Kaplan notes. I admit I felt like my efforts could have been better (especially in my first month of surgery) and I was still adjusting a lot after 2nd year and Step 1.
 
ropeadope1983 said:
As promised. Took it last Friday and got my score back today:

78 raw, 81 percentile.

I'm very happy with this and I think there's a very good chance I'll honor Surgery. This was my first 3rd year clerkship. I didn't use any practice questions, except for halfway through Pastana in the last few days before the exam. I relied mostly on NMS Surgery. If I could do it all over again I would study only NMS Surgery until a week before the shelf. In the final week I would have then studied only Pastana's notes and Kaplan notes. I admit I felt like my efforts could have been better (especially in my first month of surgery) and I was still adjusting a lot after 2nd year and Step 1.
Click to expand...

Good job!

And thanks for the tips.
 
Hi everyone, I'm taking the exam tomorrow.

My approach was to pick one decently rated, high-yield shelf study book and know everything in it cold - figuring that everything else will come so long as I have a very strong "core of knowledge." 😛 So I basically spent the entire surgery rotation typing up a condensed version of Blueprints and have just now finished looking over my 50+ pages of Blueprints notes again. I also stayed away from Surgical Recall while studying for the shelf. (Actually I kinda inadvertently stayed away from it in general...)

At this point the sample NBME Step 2 Surgery questions strike me as a bit easy, so hopefully tomorrow will be similar!! On the other hand, I also got Blueprints Q&A and took one timed exam, and I baarreelly passed it (and also noted several very frustrating errors in the answers, both typographical and factual, so I do NOT recommend it - there are even inconsistencies between Blueprints and Blueprints Q&A - not to mention it just strikes me as unnecessarily difficult... but I guess you never know with these NBME exams, right?). I also finished the 200 questions included in Blueprints itself. I probably should have gotten PreTest or some of the other books... but I'm hoping my "less is more" approach will pay off tomorrow.

I'll keep you all updated. If I don't pass it, it's all good, just take it again 🙄 We've all made it this far, and one roadblock wouldn't kill me.
 
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Could someone please tell me exactly what the Pestana review is? I have the 05-06 Kaplan notes that are 200 pages and written by Pestana, is this it?

Also, the NMS book (not the case book), is out on Amazon. Is this something that is currently used for this rotation?
 
anyone else take the shelf this week? That was BRUTAL!!! 🙁
 
I haven't taken the medicine shelf yet. Since I've heard a good portion of the surgery shelf has medicine on it, what's the best way to prepare? Would it be helpful to do some medicine questions from a Qbank?

And what aspects of medicine are most relevant? GI, Pulm, Cardio, and Fluids and electrolytes were important I heard.

So is it best to just read Lawrence for the medicine aspect or go balls out and read Step up to Medicine?
 
snakesonaplane said:
I haven't taken the medicine shelf yet. Since I've heard a good portion of the surgery shelf has medicine on it, what's the best way to prepare? Would it be helpful to do some medicine questions from a Qbank?

And what aspects of medicine are most relevant? GI, Pulm, Cardio, and Fluids and electrolytes were important I heard.

So is it best to just read Lawrence for the medicine aspect or go balls out and read Step up to Medicine?
Click to expand...

Step up to Medicine would probably be a waste of time. I found lawrence to be too wordy to get through.

I used the NMS Casebook and found it to be good. I never tried the NMS full text but others recommend it.

I used UWorld and found it pretty helpful for getting a lot of the surgical stuff down but I didn't do any of the medicine questions in UWorld so I was less prepared for the management aspect. I don't know that medicine questions in a QBank would be helpful since Medicine is such a broad topic on its own, you'd go through a lot of low-yield stuff just to get to the issues related to surgical management.

The Pestana notes were also high yield. Esp for the subspecialties that you don't rotate through but still need to know.
 
Got a 79 raw, used Kaplan Surgery for Step II x2 and NMS Casebook x1
 
Could somebody please post a link to the Pestana notes or send me a private message? I have looked everywhere online and cant seem to track them down. I would really appreciate it! I have my surgery shelf coming up. Thanks so much!!
 
kronkburger said:
Could somebody please post a link to the Pestana notes or send me a private message? I have looked everywhere online and cant seem to track them down. I would really appreciate it! I have my surgery shelf coming up. Thanks so much!!
Click to expand...

fyi they're also the exact same ones at the back of the surgery ck section. so if you can get a hold of them you're golden
 
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