Step 2 CS - Cold Turkey?

[Phange]

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It's my understanding that any medical student with proficient English and even a modicum of competency will pass Step 2 CS. So, my question is, will "studying" for CS even help? If I spent a good portion of third year doing patient interviews and writing notes, and I'm well aware of what is important in a note for CS, should I spend a lot of time learning cases?

 

[exudate]

most people recommend going through the FA cases at least to have a general idea of what is expected of us on the exam. doing interviews with patients is certainly will help you pass, but real life is different than CS...or i should say CS is different than real life. so to answer your question, it would only help you to go thru FA cases, it will not hurt you.

 

[wannabie]

There's a specific formulaic aspect of the CS that's worth learning simply because (as exudate said above) CS is different from real clinical experiences. Indeed, stories of people with an incredible amount of clinical experience who are great at writing notes, attend an Ivy league school, have a Step 1 > 250, and STILL FAIL CS are not uncommon.

Seeing patients and writing notes is great. Just realize that there's a few other things you have to be able to do too and that the Sample Patients are...different.

 

[barzan]

CS is an easy exam yet a lot fail it , on my experience of doing it, one month prior to the exam is enough, knowing the strategy behind it is the road of success.
english fluency is just a section of the exam to pass it you need to pass all three sections

 

[tayberry]

Our administration actually made a big deal about the CS this year because people used to not study and just go in to CS having done the standardized OSCE at the end of third year, but over 5 people from my (top 20) med school failed last year (according to the dean including people in the top quartile of the class). I wasn't planning on studying that much for it but I think I would still read through First Aid (there's a free .pdf of the older edition online) at least.

 

[thehundredthone]

It's not SEP where most fail, it's ICE and sometimes CIS. No amount of English can make up for not being able to at least act the part of an empathising doctor, and minimal competency may not be enough to write a good enough note. If you're totally comfortable with what should go on the CS note and know how to elicit a good history accordingly, that's half the battle won. Even if you know how to approach every single case you're still going to walk out of cases realising you should(n't) have done something, but that's expected.