hi guys, i just took step 1 on feb 28, got back from a vacation, needed that. anyways, just wanna add that my exam was something pretty crazy. i ended up with atleast 25 or more questions on physician patient relationships which u never know what is the best anwser, and a lot of questions on biochemistry (mostly mutation types) that i had no idea of. only one question on enzyme def (gauchers disease). nothing else. all else was mutation of strains and stuff i didn't encounter in kaplan books. oh and 1 genetic question on DMD and it's freq in the population being 1/3600. no biochemical pathways.
i heard a lot of the exam consists of patho, well, not in my case. the only patho question was which drug causes melanosis coli, and von willebrands disease. one question on acute leukemia which u first had to figure out that it was leukemia by looking at the slide given( looked like blast cells to me, so i chose acute leukemia) plus the female was about 32 yrs old having bleeding gums and heavy menstrual bleeding and fit in the category of AML. i was very disappointed with the format. i found the questions to be REALLY REALLY LONG to get thru. bearly had time to finish them, but somehow managed to just make each block. in the last block i was left with some 10 minutes to spare, got so frustrated that i just left the room least bothered about checking the block for any errors. but b/c i checked my previous blocks thats why i saved 2 grave mistakes from happening. instead of picking a B i had ticked a C and lucky i rechecked the block after the 50 questions otherwise that could have cost me heavy. so if u have time do check ur answers.
i was pretty cool thruout the exam but not pleased with my performance. i usually was pretty quick with qbank and qbook and i'd say my qbank avg was a 71 %.
another thing, the micro questions, although very few were very straight forward. a case of a 20 yr old male having a rash after taking ampicillin, H/o lymphadenopathy. of course it was inf mono( the answer choice was EBV). then stuff like which org is cat + and coagulase +. (staph aureus). others on pseudomonas, rhizopus, HPV, gonorhea..........
pharmac was straight too. diag of renal tubules, where do loops act. then also about infliximab( damn, i changed my right answer to wrong). also spironolactone and it's use for hirsutism (which i again changed it to wrong).. i'd say be quick with reading the questions, esp if they r so long ..look at the clock at all times and have faith in urself. i'd say first aid is honestly enough for pharm.
overall, the experience is definitely something different.
and yes, nothing much on physio except kidney diagram of filtration. no lungs, no cvs pressure volume loops. anat was straight too. diagram asking where is the murmur of rh fever heard best. some excellent brain slides but the case presentation is quiet vague( i thought). and no histo at all. only one embryo branchial arches question.
well, i just hope i somehow made it thru. can't dream of a high score though. concentrate of everything. don't just work on patho, u could get screwed otherwise.
take care and keep smiling......🙂, good luck to the future exam takers!
