UW antibiotic obscurities - should I be memorizing tables of them?

[hj0517]

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Hopefully someone has some insight into this:

The usual hospital guideline therapies such as cef + met are never an answer to UW questions. For example in a question on appendix mass the answer was cefotetan wtf? I have never ever seen cefotetan prescribed in 3 years of clinical med school.

How did you guys tackle the issue of antibiotic coverage (which in real life does not need to be memorized - thanks Sanford) on the exam?

All I know is meningitis Mx, community acquired pneumonia and surgical cover eg. cef and met or amp and gent.

Thanks!

 

[Frugal Traveler]

Hopefully someone has some insight into this:

The usual hospital guideline therapies such as cef + met are never an answer to UW questions. For example in a question on appendix mass the answer was cefotetan wtf? I have never ever seen cefotetan prescribed in 3 years of clinical med school.

How did you guys tackle the issue of antibiotic coverage (which in real life does not need to be memorized - thanks Sanford) on the exam?

All I know is meningitis Mx, community acquired pneumonia and surgical cover eg. cef and met or amp and gent.

Thanks!

You should know some bread and butter antibiotics (like the one's you hit on - PNA, meningitis, cellulitis, etc) that a medical student at your level of training is expected to know. A question about cefotetan may be answered correctly by 10 % of test takers... so questions like that could potentially be asked to make a good distribution... but it is not something I would lose sleep over. The bottom line is that you never know what is going to be on the test and you can't know everything... so knowing basics and common sense things (like the ABCs) will get you more points than random antibiotics for PID.

 

[JeffLebowski]

You should know some bread and butter antibiotics (like the one's you hit on - PNA, meningitis, cellulitis, etc) that a medical student at your level of training is expected to know. A question about cefotetan may be answered correctly by 10 % of test takers... so questions like that could potentially be asked to make a good distribution... but it is not something I would lose sleep over. The bottom line is that you never know what is going to be on the test and you can't know everything... so knowing basics and common sense things (like the ABCs) will get you more points than random antibiotics for PID.

Yeah I agree, just the common ones: pneumonia, meningitis, cellulitis, TB, Gi infections, STDs, PID, candida, maybe a few fungal pneumo/cns infections like histo or toxo. For the most part I think you just need to know the rough treatment class and regimen.

 

[hj0517]

Thanks for the responses you two - that was the attitude I was planning on taking for this exam so that's good to know.