MD Upcoming NBME Cardiovascular system exam

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FutureOrtho2024

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I have an upcoming NBME based exam using school chosen questions from various parts of different NBME subjects for cardiovascular systems and this is my first such exam in MS1. What would you recommend for time spent studying for pathology, physiology, anatomy, pharmacology, histology/cell bio, biochemistry, and microbiology? If I go by my Gutton Hall Medical Physiology vs. Robbins Pathology, there is more physiology than pathology. When I looked at an NBME basic science exam, it gave a range of 15-20% for cardiovacular on physiology and 5-10% for cardiovascular on pathology, implying more physiology than pathology content. I have spent most of my time using the Lilly pathophysiology book but upon review, it is weak on physiology vs. Gutton Hall, and Costanzo seems more of a review book than a textbook. Can someone help me get my bearings for this exam in less than 2 weeks?

As an example, Lilly describes a control of blood pressure as relatively simple, but Gutton Hall has three chapters on blood pressure control, and its very complex compared to Lilly. What is likely to be the level detail on the exam I am facing soon?

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N=1 here but I recently took the cardiovascular NBME at my school (MD). Made top 15% for my school. I study with constanza, bnb, pathoma, sketchy, anki. Master the board level material, do some practice questions and you will do just fine.
 
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I have so much else to cover using the Lilly pathophysiology book, our pharmacology book, the anatomy, the histology, and especially the pathology of ever heart, valve and vascular condition. Is it really necessary to learn the physiology at the depth of Costanzo or Gutton Hall, or can I just use the 30 pages at the start of the Lilly book for my physiology? I heard NMBE exams are almost 100% pathology questions. Here is my Lilly book: Amazon product
 
I have so much else to cover using the Lilly pathophysiology book, our pharmacology book, the anatomy, the histology, and especially the pathology of ever heart, valve and vascular condition. Is it really necessary to learn the physiology at the depth of Costanzo or Gutton Hall, or can I just use the 30 pages at the start of the Lilly book for my physiology? I heard NMBE exams are almost 100% pathology questions. Here is my Lilly book: Amazon product

There's no point in reading the textbook, unless you really prefer it. It's completely passive and frankly too dense/boring. Follow Matthew's advice above and you're fine. And to answer your question, absolutely not, that level of detail is not needed (especially not Guyton - Costanzo is a little more manageable).
 
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Costanzo strikes me as a book written to an outline of the NBME exam. It has all the information but is not organized in a logical flow, which makes it good for short term memorization, but I question its utility in really understanding the organ system for the long term, but at Step 1, in clerkships and residency later. Am I wrong? I need to strike a balance between scoring well on shelf exams and then NBME final exams per organ, and truly learning to be a good doctor and retaining what I learn long term, not just memorizing masses of information to score high on a test.
 
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Costanzo strikes me as a book written to an outline of the NBME exam. It has all the information but is not organized in a logical flow, which makes it good for short term memorization, but I question its utility in really understanding the organ system for the long term, but at Step 1, in clerkships and residency later. Am I wrong? I need to strike a balance between scoring well on shelf exams and then NBME final exams per organ, and truly learning to be a good doctor and retaining what I learn long term, not just memorizing masses of information to score high on a test.

In preclinical, you are just putting together your foundation. You will forget a lot of what you learn, and then you’ll relearn it a bunch of times. Learning using active methods like anki and questions (especially questions) will improve your retention and make the material come back much faster when you see it again.
 
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What is the best source of NBME exams, the actual exam I face? Our school uses their own developed exams until the final exam for an organ based system, so I cannot tell if the questions we are given on these school shelf exams are representative of the actual final exams from NBME. I understand that the exams are pulled from NBME and selected from a list, because NBME does not provide organ based exams, so they pull content from physiology, pathology, etc. I would like sources that are as close to the real content as possible, but I'm not asking for anyone to give me something from your own school or exam, as I know that is confidential. Can you tell me if these questions from this source and this link below are true NBME questions? They seem a lot easier than the questions I see on sources like AMBOSS and Boards N Beyond and others. See this link and please let me know.
 
Here is my situation and I'm asking for help from those who understand my plight. I'm in a medical school that uses traditional lectures and in this COVID-19 environment, I am struggling to figure out how to do the problem based / team based learning needed to score well on our exams that use the NBME exam content which I assume is USMLE. Every quiz problem is some type of clinical scenario where a patient has symptoms and you have to do a differential diagnosis with the information provided. How do I learn this within the confines of a traditional lecture only school in the middle of a pandemic? I'll also note that I've heard that at least prior to the USMLE going to non-graded for Step 1, that many students were actually studying two different curriculum - one for the school shelf exams and one for the USMLE, and now I think the difference is with COVID the informal team based learning isn't available to me, and yet I am tested assuming I can fully participate in one and/or learn the same process without the actual problem or team based environment. Please help!
 
Can I also ask a fundamental question? Do most students who are successful read a textbook or only study lectures and use Anki, Pathoma, and Boards N Beyond? I am spending about 30% of my time reading the Lilly Pathophysiology of Heart Disease book, 30% listening to lectures then studying the Powerpoints with notes I made during the lectures, and 40% doing NBME like tests using Boards and Beyond, AMBOSS, etc. Should I go to 40% lectures and review of slides and 60% of practice tests and/or Anki decks?
 
Can I also ask a fundamental question? Do most students who are successful read a textbook or only study lectures and use Anki, Pathoma, and Boards N Beyond? I am spending about 30% of my time reading the Lilly Pathophysiology of Heart Disease book, 30% listening to lectures then studying the Powerpoints with notes I made during the lectures, and 40% doing NBME like tests using Boards and Beyond, AMBOSS, etc. Should I go to 40% lectures and review of slides and 60% of practice tests and/or Anki decks?

Reading and watching lecture are passive. Anki and questions are active. Passive learning should be as close to zero as possible. Active learning should be as close to 100% as possible.

In reality this isn’t possible because you need some videos to put things into context, but you can watch them at 2x. Reading textbooks should only be if you need to clarify something and can’t find it easily online.

I’d say like at least 70% of your time should be spent doing anki and questions, then 29% watching BnB and sketchy (maybe pathoma) and 1% reading textbooks.
 
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