preparing for psych shelf exam w/ mcq's rather than text?

[bulldog]

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has anyone tried studying for psych shelf using only mcq's...a&l/pretest rather than reading blueprints? i've touched it but can't remember the stuff i read from it. thanks. i think biggest thing i'd miss out on is the dsm-iv criteria. do we have to know those cold or are the cases sufficient to arrive at a dx? any good palm versions of dsm-iv? thanks.

is FA psych any good?

 

[ljl1982]

I used First Aid for the Psychiatry Clerkship to learn the material for the clerkship. It basically has the same content as blueprints psych, but is written in outline rather than paragraph form.

Yes, you do need to know dsm-iv criteria (i had quite a few questions requiring us to differentiate between the different mood disorders based on a clinical vignette). The dsm criteria are in the FA psych book, and also in the Current Clinical Strategies Psychiatry book. The CCS book was a very useful handboo -> i believe there is a PDA version that is free from the ccs website (the user id and pw to download the pda file are the first 4numbers of the book's isbn).

For questions i used Pretest. I also used BRS Psychiatry, but wouldn't recommend it since the questions seemed too easy.

Among the shelf exams i've taken so far (psych, peds, surgery, ob-gyn), psych was the most straightforward. I took the test back in july, so i don't remember much of the content of the exam, but I scored well (in the 90's), so I'm assuming that the resources I mentioned were useful.

has anyone tried studying for psych shelf using only mcq's...a&l/pretest rather than reading blueprints? i've touched it but can't remember the stuff i read from it. thanks. i think biggest thing i'd miss out on is the dsm-iv criteria. do we have to know those cold or are the cases sufficient to arrive at a dx? any good palm versions of dsm-iv? thanks.

is FA psych any good?