The dental "USMLE" is awesome

[The Angriest Bird]

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With all due respect to dental students, their "USMLE" (Official name: NBDE) wants me to get a UW refund. Of course it has a "dental part" that medical students have absolutely no idea about.

Sample Questions from NBDE (Source: Official NBDE Site):

1. Which of the following blood elements is a fragment of megakaryocytic cytoplasm?

A. Platelet
B. Normoblast
C. Erythrocyte
D. Promyelocyte
E. Proerythroblast

2. Vessels supplying blood to the walls of large arteries are collectively known as

A. arterioles.
B. capillaries.
C. vasa vasorum.
D. metarterioles.
E. glomus.

3. Which of the following vitamins is MOST likely to be involved with bone loss in the elderly?

A. Vitamin A
B. Niacin
C. Thiamine
D. Vitamin D
E. Vitamin E

4. Hypoglycemia results from the excessive secretion of

A. glucose.
B. insulin.
C. glucagon.
D. cyclic-AMP.
E. epinephrine.

5. Which organ is the MOST susceptible to infarction due to systemic arterial thromboembolism?

A. Brain
B. Heart
C. Liver
D. Colon
E. Lung

6. Which component of the HIV virus is inhibited by AZT treatment?

A. gP120
B. ss RNA genome
C. ds DNA genome
D. Viral receptor
E. Reverse transcriptase

 

[It'sElectric]

After doing UWorld for so long now, I feel like I haven't seen a first order question in years...what a breath of fresh air the above was.

 

[osli]

You're kidding, right?

 

[agranulocytosis]

I should have become a dentist. damn.

 

[MSKalltheway]

lol! My dental friends are gonna have to get crap about this one.

 

[Tiger26]

As much of a joke as those questions seem (and they do seem like a joke, don't get me wrong), you've also gotta think that they're laughing at our test with respect to how much we have to know about teeth compared to them.

 

[Mediculous]

As much of a joke as those questions seem (and they do seem like a joke, don't get me wrong), you've also gotta think that they're laughing at our test with respect to how much we have to know about teeth compared to them.

I imagine that's true, and to add to that---the people who want to specialize are still competing against each other. Just imagine the margin for error if you're trying to get into something as competitive as orthodontics, endodontics, or oral surgery if all the questions were that easy...

 

[tfom08]

Yeah that's what I was going to say. I know people in dental school aren't stupid, so if the test really was that easy, you would hardly be able to miss a question to stay above the median test taker. Not only that, but the test can't be that easy or it wouldn't have the ability to adequately differentiate the competency of the students. There have to be some hard questions in there to separate the 70th - 95th percentile of test takers.

 

[Rogue Synapse]

Plus, their specific dental knowledge has to be vastly superior than ours (really, we don't have any "specific" dental knowledge. There are a lot of things you can know about teeth. I guess it kind of bumps out some of the medical minutae. I would rather my dentist know a ton about my teeth than be able to explain why the hell HCTZ is used to treat central diabetes insipidus.

 

[tfom08]

I would rather my dentist know a ton about my teeth than be able to explain why the hell HCTZ is used to treat central diabetes insipidus.

Central or nephrogenic? I just learned this concept by reading the other thread, don't want to get it confused now.

 

[It'sElectric]

Plus, their specific dental knowledge has to be vastly superior than ours (really, we don't have any "specific" dental knowledge. There are a lot of things you can know about teeth. I guess it kind of bumps out some of the medical minutae. I would rather my dentist know a ton about my teeth than be able to explain why the hell HCTZ is used to treat central diabetes insipidus.

While I agree that there really is no rhyme or reason for them to learn any of that, I was more blown away by how straightforward all of the questions were (purely first order). Maybe the actual "dental" questions become more convoluted, but those examples provided were as to the point as you can get on an exam.

 

[Rogue Synapse]

Central or nephrogenic? I just learned this concept by reading the other thread, don't want to get it confused now.

nephrogenic. trick question. you passed.

 

[willow18]

Ah, now I understand. I was in shock when my dental friend told me he was gonna take 2 weeks to study for his boards. I'm not that surprised though by these questions. They had similarly easy questions on some of their school-administered tests that I saw.

Not saying they're "stupider" than us or anything, but it does seem that their training is different and you can undestand it to a degree. Dentistry is not that much about differentials. More about, see it, know how to treat/prevent it, and have the manual skills to do it.