In my recent Step-2 CS exam, one of the SPs I found talking on his mobile phone when I entered the room. He was completely ignoring me!! I was dumbstruck! Was he just being rude? Why should he be? Besides, I don't think that they will allow the SPs to use their cell phones while the exam is in full swing!! So what's the deal, guys?? What was I expected to do?
Step-2 CS- peculiar behaviour of SP!!
- Thread starter i4eye
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Maybe that was part of his act. Did you politely ask him to end his phone call so you could continue with the history taking and PE? They drop your worst 2 patients during grading, so hopefully that will give you confidence knowing that this won't automatically fail you.
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Everything the SP does is part of an act. It was probably part of his presentation in some way, or to check how you deal with rude patients. In any case, I thought they dropped 2 random encounters, I didn't know it was your 2 worst.
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As far as I remember it is two random ones. I dont think they would make it so easy on us to drop the worst.
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Another reason the AOA/NBOME are mentally challenged.
Take two students, for example, that both had mediocre performances probably worthy of passing but not by a lot. One has his two worst patients dropped, the other has her two best patients dropped. He passes, she fails, due solely to the flip of a coin.
You might think the written tests are no different since chance determines what form/question set you will get on any given day, but (1) there are hundreds of questions on the exam, and statistically the average question difficulty will be more similar than not, and (2) even if the question set just happens to not fit your forte, you are judged against all other students taking exactly that same set of questions under exactly the same conditions, which is as fair as you can ask for in a test.
With patient encounters, it is possible that a comparison is implemented such that you are judged against the average of all other students having exactly the same set of patients (after dropping 2) as you. But that isn't the point. It is student performances that aren't standardized, not the patients. A student doesn't necessarily do bad on patient A and good on patient B because of the quality of the patient, or fake illness presented, but possibly for a myriad of other reasons like being nervous for the first encounter or two, distracted by a full bladder before a pee break, thrown off by a random statement made by the actor, etc.
It would only make sense that they do something similar for all students, like drop your best and worst, or drop the worst two, or drop nothing. Or whatever. But not flip a coin and then say "damn, he would have passed but looks like we'll be dropping his best two, such a shame..."
If that is true, they are ******s. To such an extent that I can't believe it is true.
Take two students, for example, that both had mediocre performances probably worthy of passing but not by a lot. One has his two worst patients dropped, the other has her two best patients dropped. He passes, she fails, due solely to the flip of a coin.
You might think the written tests are no different since chance determines what form/question set you will get on any given day, but (1) there are hundreds of questions on the exam, and statistically the average question difficulty will be more similar than not, and (2) even if the question set just happens to not fit your forte, you are judged against all other students taking exactly that same set of questions under exactly the same conditions, which is as fair as you can ask for in a test.
With patient encounters, it is possible that a comparison is implemented such that you are judged against the average of all other students having exactly the same set of patients (after dropping 2) as you. But that isn't the point. It is student performances that aren't standardized, not the patients. A student doesn't necessarily do bad on patient A and good on patient B because of the quality of the patient, or fake illness presented, but possibly for a myriad of other reasons like being nervous for the first encounter or two, distracted by a full bladder before a pee break, thrown off by a random statement made by the actor, etc.
It would only make sense that they do something similar for all students, like drop your best and worst, or drop the worst two, or drop nothing. Or whatever. But not flip a coin and then say "damn, he would have passed but looks like we'll be dropping his best two, such a shame..."
If that is true, they are ******s. To such an extent that I can't believe it is true.
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i agree it is two random ones.
Thanks guys for your inputs. I'm just kind of wondering, that most of the hospitals and wards are silent zones. So did they expect us to counsel about not using cell phone in a silent zone? It sounds incredibly stupid, but I believe most of us have already stopped expecting intelligent things from NBME anyway!😎!!
