UW Q-bank and how to solve 2 of the problems
Posted by dokidok on July 2, 2008
I started doing questions from UW Q-bank 20 day ago . Not that much difference compare to step 1. Same good style of questions, some of them very difficult.
The new thing is that they increased the length of the questions and added some additional information just to make you confused. Now, it takes more time to read between the lines and find the relevant information and toss out the information you don’t need.
In some of the questions they give a long list of lab values and if you read them one by one, you will spend 5 minutes per question.
OK, lets try now to figure out how to solve these 2 problems:
Problem number 1: Lengthy questions with “garbage information” to make you confused.
Solution: Read the last sentence and the answers first. Sometimes(may be less than 10%) the last sentence is a direct question and that will be enough to get the right answer. Don’t forget just in case to scan the whole question after you picked the answer.
If the last sentence don’t tell you anything, start reading the question thoroughly from the beginning, but scan/skip the not relevant information like BP 130/80, HR 65, RR 16(this is all normal), skip information like patient drinks one glass of wine on weekends, and used to smoke 1/2 pack a day 30 years ago(that much alcohol and ex-smoker, common…these are not risk factors). In other words be very selective and try to make the question short…of course be very careful not to miss important clues.
Problem number2: a long list with lab values.
Solution: look only at the values you need for the case. For example if the patient has RUQ pain, jaundice, fatigue, nausea, no appetite, etc., look at the lab values related to the liver, gallbladder and pancreas such as: ALT, AST, bilirubin, Amylase, Lipase. If the patient has cardiac problem you won’t be able to get that much information by looking at ALT/AST…you need CK-MB and Troponin.
