First Aid for the USLME And Study Groups 

Number 2:  First Aid for the USLME 

This is another resource that you should use in tandem with UWorld as you prepare for each STEP exam.  First Aid is a great resource because it covers all the high-yield information that you must know for the Test.  

One thing that you will soon realize, if you haven't already, is that there are way too many textbooks and resources on the market that can make it very hard to develop a concrete study strategy for the Test. Textbooks do not discriminate between common and rare diseases so it can be difficult to decide if the material you are even learning is something you are ever going to see in a Clinical Setting.  An attending will often use the term "Textbook Disease" when discussing a pathology that sounds interesting and gives amazing photos for a textbook company but something you will never see in real life.  One that I can think of off the top of my head would be Tropical Sprue.  

Any time I got a question wrong on UWorld, I would always find the tidbit of information in First Aid and may a highlight or marking to make sure I wouldn't make the same mistake again.  There is a new edition printed every year to correspond to new updates in the medical sector so I encourage you to buy the most current for the year you are doing your examination. 

READ 8 Things They Won’t Tell You about Medical School

Number 3:  Make a Study-Group 

Even if you did not have success with study groups at your University, I guarantee you that this time around, the outcome will be more favorable.  You are in Medical School now and no one is taking STEP exams lightly.  

Having someone else to help you go through material is an invaluable tool to make sure that you stay on track and cover everything that you need to.  It can also be a way to increase your efficiency because colleagues often have useful acronyms or ways of remembering certain diseases that would be something you had never even thought of.

 You may have heard continuously that doctors are part of a medical team and need to work with nurses and other hospital staff in order to treat their patients but you can also be a team with your peers and help each other get through this material.  The most detrimental factor that can hinder your studying is "burning-out."  This is the point where you are not motivated to study due to being overly stressed and overwhelmed by the material.  This will happen to everyone studying for these Exams just because of the sheer magnitude and length of time that you must study in order to do well.

The MCAT is a small quiz compared to the effort and time that you have to dedicate to this test and it is ludicrous that you are expected to be able to have the mental strength to sit behind a computer screen and complete a high-stress exam over an 8-hour period.  It is in your best interest to have someone on your side with you to help you get through these frustrations, the UWorld tests where you score 40%s, and the material you spend 2 hours studying and simply cannot remember one simple fact from the cue card.  Having a group around you will help relieve some of the stress by simply seeing you are not the only one struggling with the material.