Surgery Shelf Exam

[vitaminj]

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Does anyone have any suggestions on what book to use to prepare for the surgery shelf exam? My school uses the shelf exams regularly for our end of rotation exam. For the other ones I have taken (med, psych,peds) the Kaplan videos have been all I pretty much used. However, I watched the first of the surgery videos and it seemed pretty weak. Anybody have an experience with it? Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thank you

 

[southerndoc]

Originally posted by vitaminj
Does anyone have any suggestions on what book to use to prepare for the surgery shelf exam? My school uses the shelf exams regularly for our end of rotation exam. For the other ones I have taken (med, psych,peds) the Kaplan videos have been all I pretty much used. However, I watched the first of the surgery videos and it seemed pretty weak. Anybody have an experience with it? Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thank you

I used Blueprints and Lawrence's Essentils of General Surgery.

A lot of my test questions were actually medicine questions.

 

[pinbor1]

I used Lawrence as my main text book, and read the specialty sections in recall. Besides that I did questions from Surgery Pretest.

There is a big focus on management and trauma from what I recall.

Good luck

 

[eyehope]

The BRS specialty book is a bit thin - is it enough to ace the specialty portion of the shelf exam? Is the BRS series alone sufficient to ace (>90) the shelf? Thanks.

 

[mary]

I don't know when your exam is, but here are things that worked very well either for myself or friends. We all needed to ace the exam because we are interested in surgery.

1. Lawrence is great, especially the trauma section. I also read most of Current Surgery, because I like surgery and it was well organized a little more detailed (and I was scared to death of my attending)
2. I highly recommend using Pretest and Appleton and Lange for questions- I only used Pretest until the last week when I got the A and L from our library. It was great.
3. When in doubt, pick the choice that involves doing a procedure! ;-)

I did not use BRS at all, but the people who I know did use it thought it was good, but not sufficient on it's own to ace the exam.

Good luck!

 

[ERnelly]

I agree with some of above posts. Lawrence General surgery was great for shelf (esp trauma, electrolytes, burns). I read the Lawrence specialties book too, but wasn't helpful for shelf--too specific.
Surgery Recall was awesome!! Also thought Pretest helped. I agree that there are LOTS of medicine and GI questions on the surgery shelf. Good luck!!

 

[Legndstale]

BRS Surgery if you have the time for it

 

[Scrubbs]

Sugery Recall is an absolute MUST HAVE!!! It fits in your white coat, so you can look stuff up on the fly and definately helped both for the shelf AND for the OR pimping.

I used Lawrence to look up more detailed stuff, but didn't really read the whole book. It was a good resource though (if you can borrow it, either from a library or a friend, even better).

For questions, Appleton and Lange is a great investment. The questions were relevent, written like board questions, and had good explanations. I didn't really like PreTest for Surgery.

 

[doepug]

I used Surgical Recall and Pre-Test, and nothing else.

I found the shelf pretty easy, but I had already taken shelf exams for medicine and peds. Lawrence is a waste of your time and money. Read Recall and Pre-Test cover to cover.

Cheers,
doepug

 

[Tazmaniac]

Surgical Recall all the way.

 

[ortho2003]

Surgery recall is good for the pimp questions in the OR, but I felt BRS surgery was outstanding for the shelf. Make sure to do all the questions in BRS and do the questions in pretest. I scored over 90 on the shelf with that.

 

[eyehope]

I have about 2.5 weeks until the shelf. How much ortho, peds, neurosurg, vascular, ent is on the exam?

Just trying to use my time wisely..... thanks.

 

[Russel]

Surgical Recall
or you can use MCCQE 2002 review notes.

and(quote ) " use your time wisely" eyehope.

 

[doepug]

I only had 1-2 questions per specialty on my exam, but I think vascular counts as general surgery.

Focus your time on bread and butter issues first. Know how to evaluate the acute abdomen, BRBPR, breast mass, etc.

Cheers,
doepug

 

[oooNickiooo]

Can anyone help out a fellow MSIII and PM me the access code to the question bank for Lawrence's "Essentials of Gen Surgery"?

Thanks in advance!

 

[epson101]

For those who have taken the surgery shelf, are the sample shelf questions that NBME put out similar to the actual test difficulty level?

http://www.nbme.org/PDF/NBME2008SubjExams.pdf

B/c I found these questions to be much easier than A&L and Pretest. But I just don't want to get my hopes up if these are actually easier. So I'm wondering how they compare...

 

[Winged Scapula]

Can anyone help out a fellow MSIII and PM me the access code to the question bank for Lawrence's "Essentials of Gen Surgery"?

Thanks in advance!

Such a request is in violation of the SDN Terms of Service and is not condoned. Please do not ask users to violate restrictions placed upon them by the publisher in regards to sharing these codes.

 

[Blade28]

Please also do not bump 5-year-old threads! 😱

 

[smq123]

Please also do not bump 5-year-old threads! 😱

But at least they know how to use the search engine! 😉

 

[Blade28]

Touche! 🙂