Neurology Clerkship Shelf 2012

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happyfeet123

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Hi SDN,

Will be starting my Neurology clerkship soon. Seriously considering it for residency so I want to do really well on the shelf. Older SDN threads are years outdated so I was hoping to get some recent input.

Any advice for books/question sources would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
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happyfeet123 said:
Hi SDN,

Will be starting my Neurology clerkship soon. Seriously considering it for residency so I want to do really well on the shelf. Older SDN threads are years outdated so I was hoping to get some recent input.

Any advice for books/question sources would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
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There have been a number of recent threads, we really ought to combine them all and put an end to this. If we combined then last 12 or so it would look like one of the big threads for other shelves.

Anyways, I recommend reading blueprints twice and doing USMLEWorld. You can add pretest if you like and casefiles is okay. Some people like lange, but I found blueprints spot on.
 
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Any other reccomendations for a primary neurology text?

I hate the Blueprints series and heard that the Lange text (7th ed) is garbage. I'm looking for something along the lines of IM essential for students for Internal Medicine or Hacker and Moore for OB - A text written in paragraph format, but not error-laden like Blueprints or extremeley long like the texts practicing physicians use (ex. Harrisons). Any input would be great (I start my clerkship in 1 week) - Thanks!:)
 
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CuriousGeorge2 said:
What was your experience with this text?
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I found it had the barebones neuroanatomy and physical findings necessary to answer all of the questions, but with minimal frills. The text itself is only about 50 pages, with another 100 or so filled with cases and breakdowns of the various pathologies. It is an older book, but I enjoyed it and it only takes a couple days to read.
 
Thanks for the great advice so far!

Does anyone have an opinion on Neuroanatomy Through Clinical Cases by Blumenfield? This seems to be THE book for neuro knowledge...is it overkill for this rotation/shelf?
 
just found out my school doesnt have a "real" nbme shelf for our neurology rotation, it's an exam they made up. In that case is it best to just stick with what they teach us and do Uworld on the side? Is anybody elses rotation set up like this?
 
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happyfeet123 said:
just found out my school doesnt have a "real" nbme shelf for our neurology rotation, it's an exam they made up. In that case is it best to just stick with what they teach us and do Uworld on the side? Is anybody elses rotation set up like this?
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That and any books that your neurology department's attendings write :laugh:

kwel said:
I've read through several of the neuro threads and there doesn't seem to be a consensus on the best source out there. Ideally I'd like to have one comprehensive book that I can study the heck out of and one or two question sources.

I'm debating between CF vs. BP (or should I do both? I don't want to spread out my sources too much for obvious reasons) for the primary book, and UW vs. Pretest for the question sources.

I've generally liked CF and not been a fan of BP, but people seem to think it's better for neuro than for other things. Could it suffice as a primary book?
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Do both CF and BP IMO with BP >> CF. If you can, read BP twice, once early and once right before the shelf. This blueprints is vastly superior to the ones I saw for other rotations. This one and OBGYN were the only two that I could stomach, though I have heard a lot of good things about Peds BP. It goes by very fast. UW>>>>>>>>>>>> pretest.
 
Neurology was my first rotation of MS3 so I figured I would share my experience with you guys. Fortunately at my school shelf is only worth something like 12.5% but figured doing well might be enough to help boost me to get honors.

Prep: All of UWORLD neuro (very manageable), assorted reading in Victor's Neurology when I saw things throughout the clerkship, about 1/2 of pre-test neuro

Experience: The questions are super long. Felt like a novel and I had to rush at the end to finish. Passages for the most part are longer than UWORLD and pre-test. There were definitely gimme questions in addition to those questions where more than one answer choice sounded reasonable.
***You can't rely on buzz-word skimming. I had multiple questions which set traps that I was fortunate to catch, but running out of time forced me to skim and I'm sure i sacrificed a bunch of points***
















Result: 76. I was a it disappointed it didn't go better, Finishing pre-test might have helped. Grades won't be back for another month because clerkship grades are slow as molasses here. Hope this post helps.
 
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generalredding said:
Just my 2 cents...need to get it off of my chest.

3rd year grading is ******ed (at least at my school which is considered one of the better programs).

Our grades are absolutely rigged at least 75% of them. Please let me explain.

I have done well on every part of a rotation and only gotten "High pass" with 85% shelf, 91% standardized patient graded by some mystery nerd in a video booth somewhere and we never see what we missed points on, and then was given a range of grades "90-100%" which my school can essentially decide whether it is 90% or 100% or somewhere in-between which makes a big ****ing difference if "Honors" is 92% and above...okay by the standards of any sane person someone who blasted the shelf (2+ SD above national average, BLASTED the standardized patient exam (Highest grade in class) and was given an amazing written evaluation that said I was an OUTSTANDING student and would excel in any residency program but they hoped I chose their field. That has HONORS written all over it right?... Well my school decided for whatever reason to interpret the 90-100% bubble on my evaluation sheet as 90% which prevented me from getting Honors by 1%...

That brings me to neurology, a field I had expressed interest in during my first 2 years of medical school but am not going into.
I scored LOW 70s on my shelf (one of my worst) and got HONORS. This is ******ed...this must then mean that the bullsh*t "mystery grading" for my standardized patient must have been nearly 100% *which by the way is UNHEARD of at my school* the highest anyone has ever heard of is mid 90% and then my evaluations must have been nearly 100% which is also bullsh*t because why the hell would they randomly want to "interpret" my grade as 100% in this instance if they did not think I had a shot at applying to neurology.

Anyway, am I happy as **** that I got honors. F*ck yeah I am, but this is ******ed. I did not go $200k in debt and bust my a** for years just so some F*ckwad at my school would have grades that were mostly already determined before your clerkship even started. I am beyond ****ing pissed and I should not be. My school is always preaching integrity and ethics and being truthful. F*ck them. Seriously this is downright wrong. LOW 70s on your F*cking shelf does not mean honors when MOST people at my school scored significantly higher than that on their shelf (we tend to have around 78-80% avg. at my school).

I swear to jesus christ you could file a class action lawsuit against schools like mine.

3rd year grades are a load of crap and it sucks that for the most part the work you do does not even matter. We did not sign up to spend 4 years in undergrad working/studying weekends, and 3 years in medical school working every day/night and essentially forgoing a lot of pleasure to have a school you are paying 200K to deciding what grades to give to people like they do at my school.

Anyway...f*ck it I got honors, just wanted to brag about how big my d*ck is.

-Jenny K.
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cool story bro. any tips for the shelf? :thumbup:
 
happyfeet123 said:
Thanks for the great advice so far!

Does anyone have an opinion on Neuroanatomy Through Clinical Cases by Blumenfield? This seems to be THE book for neuro knowledge...is it overkill for this rotation/shelf?
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Awesome book! It discusses neuroanatomy and clinical cases altogether. It also has a brief section on neuroradiology and another on neurological examination, which I personally found quite helpful.

This book contains a lot of text, I would only recommend this if you actually have the time to go through it as oppose to pre-exam reviewing.
 
I've started using the Step Up To Medicine CNS/Neuro section and it seems pretty good. Do you guys think it's comprehensive enough to cover the necessary topics for the shelf? I was planning to read it a couple times through (it's only about 50 pages), but if it has a lot of gaps that might be a problem.
 
kwel said:
I've started using the Step Up To Medicine CNS/Neuro section and it seems pretty good. Do you guys think it's comprehensive enough to cover the necessary topics for the shelf? I was planning to read it a couple times through (it's only about 50 pages), but if it has a lot of gaps that might be a problem.
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No, I don't. Nor is it going to have the same focus as a neuro only book.
 
A lot of my classmates swear by the Lange Neurology text and say BPs is incredibly watered done/ not in depth enough for the shelf
 
Went through Pretest pretty quickly. Felt kinda simple, the wrong answer choices werent designed well and often it was too easy to guess the right answer. Still good for learning, imho.
 
So I ended up using some good but unpopular resources to study for this, but now I'm wondering if I'm studying all the right material. If I'm doing pretty well on UW questions (80-85%) is this a good indication of preparedness?
 
I have no UW subscription. I don't intend on getting it especially since it's $99 for one month. Btw, I'm MS4. Besides Pretest and the questions in BP/CF. Any other repository of questions??? Thanks!
 
kwel said:
So I ended up using some good but unpopular resources to study for this, but now I'm wondering if I'm studying all the right material. If I'm doing pretty well on UW questions (80-85%) is this a good indication of preparedness?
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What "unpopular" sources did you end up using?
 
How heavy on the basic sciences is the shelf? Blueprints has a lot of that basic science stuff...
 
I used Blueprints and UW x2. Read some UptoDate as well. Did the 100 question Blueprints test the day before and got discouraged, but I still think it was good practice. Pretest I thought was pretty useless, you may as well read a book. Here they also give us Clinical Neurology by Gelb which I thought was great for reading during the rotation, both readable and useful, but not much help for the Shelf.

Result: not SDN awesome but good enough.
 
How does grading work....if honors is 85 for example, at the end of the day, how many questions could you have afforded to get wrong?
 
mmmcdowe said:
Minimal, and what is basic science is all neuroanatomy, from what I remember.
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Hey - I know this is an old thread. But can you tell me how in depth one's knowledge of neuroanatomy must be to ace the shelf? Can I get away with knowing just what's in blueprints neurology, and do I need to know the anatomy in there stone cold or just pretty good to ace the test? I can probably narrow things down to general areas like pons or thalamus, but its going to be a mighty feat if I have to know the tracts or nuclei cold.
 
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