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UW Pharm...advice?
- Thread starter Cards21aceking
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I feel like it is just knowing everything (SEs, mechs, toxicities, uses for some drugs) because probably 80-90% of the pharm questions I miss, I flip to the section in FA and see that the info needed to answer the question is listed right there and I just didn't remember it. Of course, 10-20% of the time, the info is nowhere to be found, so the only way I ever get those ones right is process of elimination.
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just from the 2 NBMEs I've taken it seems like some of the UW pharm is crazy random and asks an extra step or 2 compared to the NBMEs. I have found a ton of drugs that just arent in FA. Even with FA and lippincott open there are a bunch of question i just dont feel like I would be able to answer in UW.
It's not like I knew all the mechanisms or SE that were asked in the NBMEs but there werent too many questions where I was completely dumbfounded. With UW I rarely have a pharm question where I'm not like WTF? There have been some where i dont even know what they are looking for.
2 days ago I had a question in UW that gave me a pt who was taking a list of like 5 drugs and then asked which drug (in the 7 answer choices) should you not give. I had to figure out which initial drug they were talking about and what that drug would interact with. The answer wasnt exactly a major interaction like nitrates and ED drugs. Needless to say I missed it (and so did something like 89% of people). Really, if around 10% are getting the question right it has to be kinda out there.
On a random note, one of our professors sits on the committee that makes up the USMLE pharm questions. During our review he told us that they counted the # of drugs that were the correct answer to the question in the USMLE bank of questions. There are 1200 different drugs that are correct answers... 1200. Really?
It's not like I knew all the mechanisms or SE that were asked in the NBMEs but there werent too many questions where I was completely dumbfounded. With UW I rarely have a pharm question where I'm not like WTF? There have been some where i dont even know what they are looking for.
2 days ago I had a question in UW that gave me a pt who was taking a list of like 5 drugs and then asked which drug (in the 7 answer choices) should you not give. I had to figure out which initial drug they were talking about and what that drug would interact with. The answer wasnt exactly a major interaction like nitrates and ED drugs. Needless to say I missed it (and so did something like 89% of people). Really, if around 10% are getting the question right it has to be kinda out there.
On a random note, one of our professors sits on the committee that makes up the USMLE pharm questions. During our review he told us that they counted the # of drugs that were the correct answer to the question in the USMLE bank of questions. There are 1200 different drugs that are correct answers... 1200. Really?
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I can probably name 10 of them.
honestly, all you need to know for pharm is whats in first aid for every section. know the MAIN drug names of each CLASS and definitely focus on mechanisms and BIG TIME side effects. this is the only section that World went way too far into detail with. the stuff on the test is not nearly as intimidating.
