Step 2 ck score raised...

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Wow, 209 is now passing? :wow:I guess I shouldn't be surprised when the mean is 238.
 
I sure hope somebody makes Medicineoma before it's my turn.
 
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Why don't they just make the tests harder instead of bumping up the passing scores? As you raise the average higher and higher, it becomes more difficult to stratify students.
 
Normally I would say "you shouldn't have to worry about the minimum passing score" because the last thing you should be worrying about is not passing this exam, but seriously, this passing score creep is scary. 20 points in 2 years? Geeeeeez.
 
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i wonder why they did this.. Only one thing makes sense to me, its if there was a LOT of students not matching from 203-209, so this is kind of a second chance?.. dunno
 
PL198 said:
Why don't they just make the tests harder instead of bumping up the passing scores? As you raise the average higher and higher, it becomes more difficult to stratify students.
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They actually have made the test harder:
  • Before it used to be one sentence type questions. Now they're made into clinical vignettes.
  • Before the questions used to be subject-specific (i.e. Biochemistry question, Anatomy question). Now they cross disciplines and aren't subject specific necessarily.
  • Before they only had one best answer multiple choice, now they've added sequential item sets.
  • Before they used to have a lot of buzzwords, now those are disappearing and they put in a clinical description of those findings.
  • Over the years, they've added images and interpretation of diagrams, as well as audio of heart murmurs, and video.
 
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Kaputt said:
Normally I would say "you shouldn't have to worry about the minimum passing score" because the last thing you should be worrying about is not passing this exam, but seriously, this passing score creep is scary. 20 points in 2 years? Geeeeeez.
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All the more reason to tell people once they enter med school to get out as fast as you can. Can you imagine the people who took a year off and then came back having to be the first class who took Step 2 CS?
 
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DermViser said:
They actually have made the test harder:
  • Before it used to be one sentence type questions. Now they're made into clinical vignettes.
  • Before the questions used to be subject-specific (i.e. Biochemistry question, Anatomy question). Now they cross disciplines and aren't subject specific necessarily.
  • Before they only had one best answer multiple choice, now they've added sequential item sets.
  • Before they used to have a lot of buzzwords, now those are disappearing and they put in a clinical description of those findings.
  • Over the years, they've added images and interpretation of diagrams, as well as audio of heart murmurs, and video.
Click to expand...

Well I guess the study resources have probably improved, but I just don't see it plausible to keep raising the scores. At some point, the tests need to be re-written or the averages are going to end up being 240.
 
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DermViser said:
They actually have made the test harder:
  • Before it used to be one sentence type questions. Now they're made into clinical vignettes.
  • Before the questions used to be subject-specific (i.e. Biochemistry question, Anatomy question). Now they cross disciplines and aren't subject specific necessarily.
  • Before they only had one best answer multiple choice, now they've added sequential item sets.
  • Before they used to have a lot of buzzwords, now those are disappearing and they put in a clinical description of those findings.
  • Over the years, they've added images and interpretation of diagrams, as well as audio of heart murmurs, and video.
Click to expand...

And the funny thing is that your hear some of these old farts complain about how the "younger generation" medical students and physicians aren't good, hard working, etc. They all had it easier.
 
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Cyal said:
And the funny thing is that your hear some of these old farts complain about how the "younger generation" medical students and physicians aren't good, hard working, etc. They all had it easier.
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Yup. Exactly.

I think any one of us would have LOVED to take their boards with straightforward questions like these:http://www2.uic.edu/stud_orgs/prof/...tomy/NBME Review/NBME Questions - Anatomy.pdf

They had it easier in all aspects: debt, getting a residency some even doing double residencies, no NRMP match, getting full reimbursement from Medicare, taking full advantage of fee-for service etc.
 
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PL198 said:
lol wut? that was a thing?
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It was still a possibility. There are many bigwigs in Derm who did Internal Medicine and then did Derm, with no decrease in Medicare funding.
 
Shouldn't a passing step score be an objective mark? I mean, either you have enough clinical knowledge to be a competent physician or you don't. The average score achieved on the step exam should be irrelevant to what the passing score is set at.
 
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sidefx said:
Shouldn't a passing step score be an objective mark? I mean, either you have enough clinical knowledge to be a competent physician or you don't. The average score achieved on the step exam should be irrelevant to what the passing score is set at.
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But then the NBME wouldn't be able to rake in the $$$ from retakes!
 
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shiftingmirage said:
I thought the point of CS was to make money. Is that not enough?
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There is never enough, my friend.

And the NBME is addressing concerns about CS and has substantially increased the fail rate starting this year. One of the faculty here who follows medical education stuff - standardized testing specifically - pretty closely said that a lot of the schools in our area which have traditionally done extremely well suddenly have double-digit failure rates on CS. The NBME says this is in response to the reputation of CS being an "English test" which requires very little preparation and thought, but obviously the $1300 retesting fees from students who fail this suddenly more difficult test are a nice side effect as well.
 
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NickNaylor said:
There is never enough, my friend.

And the NBME is addressing concerns about CS and has substantially increased the fail rate starting this year. One of the faculty here who follows medical education stuff - standardized testing specifically - pretty closely said that a lot of the schools in our area which have traditionally done extremely well suddenly have double-digit failure rates on CS. The NBME says this is in response to the reputation of CS being an "English test" which requires very little preparation and thought, but obviously the $1300 retesting fees from students who fail this suddenly more difficult test are a nice side effect as well.
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I'm wondering at what point residency programs are allowed to train residents rather than making the entry point to get into residency harder thru a licensing exam. I noticed they keep adding stuff to the Step 2 CS note: http://usmle-step2cs.blogspot.com/
 
DermViser said:
I'm wondering at what point residency programs are allowed to train residents rather than making the entry point to get into residency harder thru a licensing exam. I noticed they keep adding stuff to the Step 2 CS note: http://usmle-step2cs.blogspot.com/
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This same faculty member said that the most frustrating aspect of trying to prepare students for CS is that there's no clear description of what is expected of examinees. There are vague criteria (e.g., what's linked in that post) but little elaboration beyond that. Her opinion is that it is fundamentally unfair for both schools trying to prepare their students and the students themselves.
 
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NickNaylor said:
This same faculty member said that the most frustrating aspect of trying to prepare students for CS is that there's no clear description of what is expected of examinees. There are vague criteria (e.g., what's linked in that post) but little elaboration beyond that. Her opinion is that it is fundamentally unfair for both schools trying to prepare their students and the students themselves.
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I agree, I realized that the LCME and the NBME implement rules and exams without any input from the medical schools themselves. Essentially they say - here's the new thing to incorporate into the curriculum, and then it's the medical school's problem to implement it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1681601/

So then people complain, and so to justify it, they do a phony, scientifically dubious study to justify the exam as somehow showing a relationship between USMLE Step 2 CS and clinical medicine:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23524927
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15851465

These people get off on assessing and finding new methods to assess physicians as their goal in life under the moniker of "protecting the public":
http://www.nbme.org/about/centennialcompetition.html
http://player.vimeo.com/video/90154003
 
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NickNaylor said:
There is never enough, my friend.

And the NBME is addressing concerns about CS and has substantially increased the fail rate starting this year. One of the faculty here who follows medical education stuff - standardized testing specifically - pretty closely said that a lot of the schools in our area which have traditionally done extremely well suddenly have double-digit failure rates on CS. The NBME says this is in response to the reputation of CS being an "English test" which requires very little preparation and thought, but obviously the $1300 retesting fees from students who fail this suddenly more difficult test are a nice side effect as well.
Click to expand...

I'll be curious to see the what the passing rates are after the increased threshold for passing.

Were those changes implemented at the beginning of 2013? According to the data from the USMLE, the pass rate for US seniors who took the exam 6/17/12-6/30/13 is identical to US seniors who took the exam 7/1/11-5/19/12.
http://www.usmle.org/performance-data/default.aspx#2013_step-2-cs
 
Kaputt said:
I'll be curious to see the what the passing rates are after the increased threshold for passing.

Were those changes implemented at the beginning of 2013? According to the data from the USMLE, the pass rate for US seniors who took the exam 6/17/12-6/30/13 is identical to US seniors who took the exam 7/1/11-5/19/12.
http://www.usmle.org/performance-data/default.aspx#2013_step-2-cs
Click to expand...

Nope, per her these changes were introduced at the beginning of this year.
 
DermViser said:
They actually have made the test harder:
  • Before it used to be one sentence type questions. Now they're made into clinical vignettes.
  • Before the questions used to be subject-specific (i.e. Biochemistry question, Anatomy question). Now they cross disciplines and aren't subject specific necessarily.
  • Before they only had one best answer multiple choice, now they've added sequential item sets.
  • Before they used to have a lot of buzzwords, now those are disappearing and they put in a clinical description of those findings.
  • Over the years, they've added images and interpretation of diagrams, as well as audio of heart murmurs, and video.
Click to expand...

Also more recently, they've added convoluted pub-med style long abstracts with esoteric statistics questions. Literally look like this with 1-2 figures as well. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24908223

Also they've added nebulous 3-4 page "drug ad" questions with intentionally misleading figures.

No doubt some of the dopes I worked under during m3 would be slaughtered on today's step exams.
 
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KinasePro said:
Also more recently, they've added convoluted pub-med style long abstracts with esoteric statistics questions. Literally look like this with 1-2 figures as well. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24908223

Also they've added nebulous 3-4 page "drug ad" questions with intentionally misleading figures.

No doubt some of the dopes I worked under during m3 would be slaughtered on today's step exams.
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Wow, that sucks! And of course students are left to fend for themselves to prepare for these type of questions that they've never had exposure to before. This is why I hate people who complain about straightforward rote memorization questions. Those are the easy ones to nail points on. It's these convoluted BS questions which trips everyone.
 
We're doing this to ourselves. Stop studying FOR the test during MSI. Stop buying so many study materials. Stop doing Uworld ;-)

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Oh, and this is terrible because they're only allowing six retake now. :-( Totally unfair.

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tco said:
We're doing this to ourselves. Stop studying FOR the test during MSI. Stop buying so many study materials. Stop doing Uworld ;-)

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Nice try
 
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tco said:
We're doing this to ourselves. Stop studying FOR the test during MSI. Stop buying so many study materials. Stop doing Uworld ;-)

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Nice try, gunner.
 
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Not trying to derail this into a MD/DO thing, but I find it interesting that they are doing all this at the same time that they just decided to merge with the AOA. Have the COMLEX exams gotten any more difficult in the past years? If not, arnt we kinda shooting ourselves in the foot...we'll have more failures/retakes on the MD side.
 
ShinyDome19 said:
Not trying to derail this into a MD/DO thing, but I find it interesting that they are doing all this at the same time that they just decided to merge with the AOA. Have the COMLEX exams gotten any more difficult in the past years? If not, arnt we kinda shooting ourselves in the foot...we'll have more failures/retakes on the MD side.
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The NBME has been doing this over years since the USMLE was first created. This is absolutely nothing new and has nothing to do with the merger.
 
tco said:
Already done with those stupid exams :p Can't be gunning if I'm done.

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I know. But those gunning habits die hard, esp. if you're going for an IR fellowship. ;)
 
DermViser said:
I know. But those gunning habits die hard, esp. if you're going for an IR fellowship. ;)
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By that time, IR will be saturated and no longer competitive.

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tco said:
By that time, IR will be saturated and no longer competitive.

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Doubt it. It's the one area that requires a human body to be on-site.
 
NickNaylor said:
the $1300 retesting fees from students who fail this suddenly more difficult test are a nice side effect as well.
Click to expand...

What is the profit margin on a step 2 CS administration? That is a question nobody can answer. In order to conclude that this is all about the $$$ for the NBME, we need to know what their margins are. I imagine it is pretty expensive to operate and staff their testing centers and then pay for their administrative and quality control/grading overhead.

The major point is that step 2 CS should not be required for US MD graduates. These schools are accredited and by making their students take the test, the NBME is saying "we don't trust the accreditation body to ensure that your school does not allow clinically incompetent students to graduate." The test makes sense for FMGs and IMGs from schools not accredited in the US.
 
DermViser said:
Doubt it. It's the one area that requires a human body to be on-site.
Click to expand...

Keep reassuring me. That's a huge fear of mine... :p

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atomi said:
What is the profit margin on a step 2 CS administration? That is a question nobody can answer. In order to conclude that this is all about the $$$ for the NBME, we need to know what their margins are. I imagine it is pretty expensive to operate and staff their testing centers and then pay for their administrative and quality control/grading overhead.

The major point is that step 2 CS should not be required for US MD graduates. These schools are accredited and by making their students take the test, the NBME is saying "we don't trust the accreditation body to ensure that your school does not allow clinically incompetent students to graduate." The test makes sense for FMGs and IMGs from schools not accredited in the US.
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You can maybe get an idea for total operations here: http://www.guidestar.org/PartnerReport.aspx?ein=23-1352238&Partner=Amex
 
Cyal said:
And the funny thing is that your hear some of these old farts complain about how the "younger generation" medical students and physicians aren't good, hard working, etc. They all had it easier.
Click to expand...

lol exactly. 40 years ago this is what Step 1 would have looked like

33 y/o comes with N. gonorrhea, what's the best treatment? Penicillin.
42 y/o comes in with strep pneumo, what's the best treatment? Penicillin.
21 y/o comes in with E. coli UTI, what's the best treatment? Penicillin.
40 y/o comes in with S. aureus follicuitis, what's the best treatment? Penicillin.
22 y/o comes in with Pseudomonas aeruginosa pneumonia, what's the best treatment? Penicillin.
68 y/o comes in with N. meningitis, what's the best treatment? Penicillin.
53 y/o comes in with Strep pyo narcotizing faciitis, what's the best treatment? Penicillin.
15 y/o comes in with H. influenzae otitis media, what's the best treatment? Penicillin.

Dude comes in with Burkitt's Lymphoma, lol jk, burkitt's hasn't even been discovered yet.

Dude comes in with GBM, what oncogene is most responsible for this cancer? lol, jk, what's an oncogene?

DNA sequence of dude's transporter gene, lol jk, there's no way to sequence DNA.

Dude gets treated with reverse engineered, monoclonal antibodies? Jk, lol, what's an antibody?
 
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notbobtrustme said:
lol exactly. 40 years ago this is what Step 1 would have looked like

33 y/o comes with N. gonorrhea, what's the best treatment? Penicillin.
42 y/o comes in with strep pneumo, what's the best treatment? Penicillin.
21 y/o comes in with E. coli UTI, what's the best treatment? Penicillin.
40 y/o comes in with S. aureus follicuitis, what's the best treatment? Penicillin.
22 y/o comes in with Pseudomonas aeruginosa pneumonia, what's the best treatment? Penicillin.
68 y/o comes in with N. meningitis, what's the best treatment? Penicillin.
53 y/o comes in with Strep pyo narcotizing faciitis, what's the best treatment? Penicillin.
15 y/o comes in with H. influenzae otitis media, what's the best treatment? Penicillin.

Dude comes in with Burkitt's Lymphoma, lol jk, burkitt's hasn't even been discovered yet.

Dude comes in with GBM, what oncogene is most responsible for this cancer? lol, jk, what's an oncogene?

DNA sequence of dude's transporter gene, lol jk, there's no way to sequence DNA.

Dude gets treated with reverse engineered, monoclonal antibodies? Jk, lol, what's an antibody?
Click to expand...

Introducing... scumbag old attending.

9g955.jpg


9g9b2.jpg
 
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KinasePro said:
Introducing... scumbag old attending.

9g955.jpg


9g9b2.jpg
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Not at all surprised that the Baby Boomer/Medicare generation are complete hypocrites. They should call it the "Me" generation. They'd be willing to throw the country into bankruptcy to fund their healthcare needs.
 
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NickNaylor said:
That seems to be the implication as she was quite clear that this was a recent change starting this year. I'll be honest though and say I didn't look into it too much.
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It's the Class of 2014 that constantly complained about the failure rate going up on CS on the Step 2 forums. Most took the exam last summer, many (if not most) after June 30, 2013. Those figures aren't in yet.

DermViser said:
Not at all surprised that the Baby Boomer/Medicare generation are complete hypocrites. They should call it the "Me" generation. They'd be willing to throw the country into bankruptcy to fund their healthcare needs.
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EVERY generation thinks they had/have it harder than the ones before and the ones after. This is nothing new.
 
Elisabeth Kate said:
EVERY generation thinks they had/have it harder than the ones before and the ones after. This is nothing new.
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Except in this case, it's actually true. Before you could graduate med school, do a 1 year internship, and set up shop. There's no way you can do that now. Requirements have been going up ever since.
 
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