Study material for family medicine clerkship

[Poppy123]

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Any suggestions? I hear it's actually pretty hard.

 

[joe6102]

Any suggestions? I hear it's actually pretty hard.

Casefiles 👍
The shelf is really hard, but casefiles and the ambulatory section of Step Up to Medicine will be enough.

 

[beponychick]

Casefiles 👍
The shelf is really hard, but casefiles and the ambulatory section of Step Up to Medicine will be enough.

Even if FM is your first rotation?

Thanks.

 

[LadyGrey]

Family was my first rotation last year. Everybody I knew swore by Blueprints. I read it, but thought it was crap. I discovered Case Files the day before the exam and read as much as I could, and did pretty well. I was hooked on Case Files from then on.

 

[.edu-MD]

I don't think Case Files and the Ambulatory section of Step-Up Medicine are enough if FM is your first rotation, unless you've got some great extra teaching going on during the rotation. Those were two of the sources I used and I don't feel good about that test at all. I also spent some time with Case Files OB and Blueprints Peds but I don't remember a single OB question on the test. And the peds coverage was extremely light--not even the typical rashes/fevers of childhood. I went through most of the AAFP.org questions but I didn't feel like those were that helpful for this test and may have been a waste of time for me.

For perspective, I had a 1-month FM rotation in a private practice that sees no OB and essentially no peds (I personally didn't see any come through while I was there). There were no lectures as might be found in a residency-affiliated clinic. There was no "bedside" teaching since I never had anyone with me when I saw patients. So all the practical stuff I learned on the rotation about H&Ps, workflow, billing, etc obviously was not the stuff tested on a shelf. Our department provided a couple hours of lectures 3 times over the clerkship but this obviously doesn't begin to cover the broad amount of material on the shelf.

Some people got away with 3- or 4-day workweeks and had much more time to study. I had 10-hr days most of my 5-day workweeks. While I learned a lot about the "practice" of FM, I didn't get the time to read enough over only 3.5 weeks to feel comfortable that I passed this shelf (and our "pass" rate is pretty low--60% raw). Step 1 was cake compared to this thing. 👎

(Remember my context: this was my first shelf after only a 3.5 week rotation with a placement that saw no OB nor peds. It only worked out to 13.5 days actually in the clinic after other [unhelpful] required activities are subtracted out).

 

[medicomel]

I have to echo the above poster by saying that this shelf made Step 1 look easy. I was ACTUALLY thinking that as I was taking it yesterday. I also felt like I was pacing myself a little faster with the very long passages to keep up with the time.

I started with Blueprints, but stopped because it seemed way too easy. I switched to Case Files FM for about 4 weeks, and finished up with a week's worth of Pre-Test going over answers for the right and wrong ones. I can't say that I passed with flying colors, but I would have been really screwed if all I had read was Blueprints.

The Pre-Test difficulty was along the same lines of that seen on the shelf exam.

 

[beponychick]

I have to echo the above poster by saying that this shelf made Step 1 look easy. I was ACTUALLY thinking that as I was taking it yesterday. I also felt like I was pacing myself a little faster with the very long passages to keep up with the time.

I started with Blueprints, but stopped because it seemed way too easy. I switched to Case Files FM for about 4 weeks, and finished up with a week's worth of Pre-Test going over answers for the right and wrong ones. I can't say that I passed with flying colors, but I would have been really screwed if all I had read was Blueprints.

The Pre-Test difficulty was along the same lines of that seen on the shelf exam.

Hey guys,

Thanks for your input. Did anyone by any chance look at the practice questions that the NBME puts out online? There are 20 of the sample Family Med questions and they do not seem very difficult at all. Is the real test much harder than those 20 questions?

Thanks again!

 

[JeffLebowski]

Hey guys,

Thanks for your input. Did anyone by any chance look at the practice questions that the NBME puts out online? There are 20 of the sample Family Med questions and they do not seem very difficult at all. Is the real test much harder than those 20 questions?

Thanks again!

Everyone so far has said that the FM shelf was very difficult for them. Why would they then turn around and say "no, they weren't any harder than those easy questions".

 

[beponychick]

Everyone so far has said that the FM shelf was very difficult for them. Why would they then turn around and say "no, they weren't any harder than those easy questions".

I was just asking how the real exam compared to sample NBME items which I thought was a legitimate question. Maybe I should have phrased my question differently, but what's with the attitude? 👎

 

[.edu-MD]

I also felt like I was pacing myself a little faster with the very long passages to keep up with the time.

Yes I agree with this as well. More questions were longer, and more had >10 answer choices.

Some tips that helped me with time:
1) Reading the last sentence of the question first. Several of them didn't require the long passage to answer (although in these instances I always verified by skimming through the stem after choosing my answer to ensure they were really asking what I thought they were asking).

2) Know standard lab values so you don't have to keep looking them up. RBC parameters, lytes, BUN/Cr, LFTs, and TSH ranges are key. I had memorized many of these for Step 1 but hadn't added anything on since then. That was a mistake. I could have saved some time there on question reading (being able to pull out the affected lab result just by glancing) and also not having to refer.

I'm sure these will help me for future shelfs. I just wish someone had suggested point #2 to me.

 

[beponychick]

Hey guys!

Any other suggestions? I have my exam this week and am beginning to freak out.

 

[Dr. Weebs]

It's impossible to cover all of the material in a short rotation. I feel like the reason I did well on it was that I studied so hard for Step 1 and remembered a lot from that.

There was a little of everything on this shelf. I even had a question about child psychiatry and oedipus complex. Soo... you just cant study for it all. Pick a couple of books like Case Files/Pretest and just know them as well as you can. That's all you can do.

 

[lilnoelle]

I'm pretty sure that I'm screwed for my FM shelf this Friday. Its not that I've slacked off.... Its just that life is busy. I'm having a really hard time finding time (and energy) to study after putting my kiddos to bed at 9:00 at night. Tonight I had every intention to study really hard all night - and then I remembered my daughter had a "project" due for school tomorrow. She's in kidnergarten, so it wasn't exactly something difficult, just a family scrapbook page - which was definitely not something she could do by herself. Well, I had to print the pictures off the computer, which turned out to be quite the ordeal... I started working on the project around 9:00 and finished at midnight!!!

Anyway, it seems like that kind of stuff happens more often than not and I have just not found time to study.

Oh well, live and learn I guess.