Official Pediatrics Shelf Exam Thread

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bump regarding the kaplan CK notes for studying
 
hey my school uses an internal peds exam based on CLIPP cases. any one have to use clipp cases? or had a peds exam based on them. do you need pretest, FA, BP etc.

thanks
 
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aaroncw1981 said:
hey my school uses an internal peds exam based on CLIPP cases. any one have to use clipp cases? or had a peds exam based on them. do you need pretest, FA, BP etc.

thanks
Click to expand...


We use CLIPP cases but we take shelf exam in addition to short internal exam. They are not that bad. 31 of them in total and really easy to get through.
 
aaroncw1981 said:
hey my school uses an internal peds exam based on CLIPP cases. any one have to use clipp cases? or had a peds exam based on them. do you need pretest, FA, BP etc.

thanks
Click to expand...
We used the questions that came with the CLIPP cases for mini-quizzes. They were a lot harder than the NBME shelf questions.
 
am i the only one reading the cardio section in blueprints and wondering WTF
 
Couple of questions...
How long is the exam?
How many questions on the exam?
Do they give you normal lab values in the booklet?
What practice questions did you find were the closest questions to the actual test as far as lenght of question, style of question, and difficulty of question?

Were pretest and A&L easier or harder than the real thing?
Thanks in advance.
 
>How long is the exam?
>How many questions on the exam?

2h10min; 100 questions

>Do they give you normal lab values in the booklet?

Yes, but you don't have much time to look at them, so be familiar with the labs (hgb,hct, bicarb, etc.)

>What practice questions did you find were the closest questions to the >actual test as far as lenght of question, style of question, and difficulty of >question?

I thought A&L was way too short (but I had an old version of the text). I would suggest against this book unless you have nothing else to read.

I thought Pretest questions were shorter than the real shelf questions but the materials covered in pretest were very good. I would definitely suggest this book. Pretest less "random" than A&L and more thorough.

To me the questions in casefiles were long enough and seemed to mimic the shelf more. I would suggest starting with casefiles and reviewing casefile bold points and q's the week before the test.

On the otherhand, i have no idea how I did. Seemed ok after the test, but I was a but too slow.
 
Hello All,
I have found this thread to be very helpful and am just wondering specifically which books folks mean when they say blueprints or pretest. Do you mean the Q and A books?
Many thanks!
 
JesseDawn said:
Hello All,
I have found this thread to be very helpful and am just wondering specifically which books folks mean when they say blueprints or pretest. Do you mean the Q and A books?
Many thanks!
Click to expand...

The Bluprints text, and PreTest Q/A book - although I don't think PreTest even makes anything besides Q/A books.
 
anything like MKSAP for peds? or for any of the other 3rd year rotations for that matter (surgery, ob, etc)??
 
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Hey all....

I was wondering if anyone has used Case Files for Peds to study for the shelf exam? If so, was it worth the time, or should I stick to Blueprints and Pre-Test?

Thanks.....
 
Sweepea8137 said:
Hey all....

I was wondering if anyone has used Case Files for Peds to study for the shelf exam? If so, was it worth the time, or should I stick to Blueprints and Pre-Test?

Thanks.....
Click to expand...
Loved Case Files. Would use that instead of Blueprints as your text, and do as many questions as you can handle. My raw score was 88.
 
I just got my score back ... 70 raw score which according to my department is 30th % ... is that right. It seems like it should be higher than the 30th%. Anyone else get their scores back and wouldn't mind sharing their raw vs. % score just so I can get an idea of the range.
 
Unfortunately that sounds about right. We're told that below 10th percentile lies somewhere in the 60's. BTW, how was the test? Any hints?
 
nockamura said:
Unfortunately that sounds about right. We're told that below 10th percentile lies somewhere in the 60's. BTW, how was the test? Any hints?
Click to expand...

it was hard. :( there were a lot of questions where i could narrow down the choices to two and then got stuck. and most of the answer options were two reasoning steps removed from the question stem. I.e. blah blah -clinical scenario- What is the most likely mechanism of disease? I know these types of questions abound in the shelf exams, but I thought there were more in this shelf than the others I've taken. Oh and a lot of the vignettes were rather vague and had some distractor factoids that might make you think of another disease even though the rest of the vignette was more consistent with some other.

** update: I just got my score back -- a very unexpected >95. i don't know how that happened. anyway i used blueprints, case files and pretest. know the typical clinical presentations of common stuff. **
 
biomedperson said:
I just got my score back ... 70 raw score which according to my department is 30th % ... is that right. It seems like it should be higher than the 30th%. Anyone else get their scores back and wouldn't mind sharing their raw vs. % score just so I can get an idea of the range.
Click to expand...

I swear I read on the USMLE site that "70" was the 50th %ile +/- 8 pts.
 
anyone use pediatric secrets or recall? if so, what'd you think?
 
For the shelf, Recall was worthless. Might help with pimping questions though. I mainly used a book that was for residents I think (it was all that was left in the library) and case files. For questions I did pre-test 3-4 times. I highly recommend the palm version from BrainGlue since you can do it whenever you get down time and it looks like you're looking up a differential or something rather than studying for your shelf.
We got our scores back and we were told that average was 74.1, but I don't know if that's the national average or our school average.
 
78 raw score = 70%ile; hope that helps.
 
Does.anyone.have.recommendations.for.small.texts.or.manuals.for.
Pediatrics?(e.g.Harriet.Lane.etc.)??..Not.so.much.specifically.for.the.
shelf,but.to.really.get.a.good.grasp.on.ddx/management/decision.
making.in.Peds.

Thanks.
 
Antiviral22 said:
Does.anyone.have.recommendations.for.small.texts.or.manuals.for.
Pediatrics?(e.g.Harriet.Lane.etc.)??..Not.so.much.specifically.for.the.
shelf,but.to.really.get.a.good.grasp.on.ddx/management/decision.
making.in.Peds.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

what.on.earth.is.the.intention.of.the.periods.in.between.each.word? you're.weird.
 
took the beast on 1/2/08 and got the results today: 82 (84th percentile).

resources used:
1. 358 peds questions in USMLEasy Lite.
2. 180+ peds questions in ExamMaster.
3. lecture handouts

available resource that I didn't use: PreTest, BluePrints, CaseFiles.

but what helped me the most was (1) having recently taken Step 1 (2) paying attention during rounds and asking lots of questions.

my $0.02
 
Just got my score back raw 82, not sure of the percentile.

I used:
1.Case Files-Pretty succinct and stresses topics that aren't explained thoroughly or with any emphasis in other books i.e. lacrimal duct obstruction
2.Usmleworld-As always super helpful in beating the most common test questions in to your head. If you aren't to good at exanthems just use this and you'll have them down.
3.Kaplan online qbank-Nice set of questions, a pretty good supplement to world.
4.Lange Peds qbook-The questions in this book are not set up in clinical vignette style for the most part. Its mostly one sentence questions which is nothing like the shelf. However, it covers a broad range of topics, many of which came on my exam. If I had to do it over i'd probably use it again.
 
Took it today.

Used: Case Files, Pretest, Blueprints text, Appleton&Lange, Kaplan Qbook, CLIPP.

Without giving anything away:

- Lots of buzzwords. A few questions seemed to require that you recognize the buzzword in order to select an answer.

- Lots of two-step questions where you must first arrive at the diagnosis and then choose the right study, treatment, or demonstrate knowledge of the disease mechanism.

- Lots of straight-forward questions with exceedingly long stems. Be prepared to read fast and focus on what is important.

- Lots of high yield topics. Very little esoterica.

- Lots of questions that have you interpret a CBC with differential in light of various clinical presentations.

- A fair representation of questions where the diagnosis is obvious, but you must prioritize steps in patient management (i.e. hydrate before or after antibiotics, treat the fever or treat vomiting, etc).

- A handful of ethics and public health questions.

- About half of the questions reminded me of questions I had encountered in Case Files or Appleton&Lange (except the stems were longer and full of superfluous information that A&L spares you).


I'm pretty sure I passed. We had some really great faculty mentors at my school and I saw a wide array of patients during my clerkship; however, doing lots and lots of questions seemed to prepare me the most for this exam.

Good Luck!!!
 
BUMP.

What have people been using lately? Any advice on what books to study for NBOME peds shelf?
 
I think that all the resources have been talked about at length on this thread, but if you want to break 80 after having forgotten all the pedi-related material learned for Step 1, you just need to read Case Files x 2 and Pre-Test x 2. If you don't have time to read Case Files twice, definitely put away time to go through Pre-Test twice since you won't absorb everything the first time around. Don't forget to brush up on immunodeficiencies.
 
Just took this thing yesterday...

ONE question on devopmental milestones and it was a no brainer. I could have answered this Q before going to med school.

Many questions on endocrinology. Early & late puberty, adrenal diseases, thyroid, etc, etc.

Many derm questions-all on common stuff.

Many questions of the format of Mom brings in kiddo and is concerned about X. One answer choice is always to reassure the parent that X is normal or will correct on its own. Know common concerns like benign newborn skin issues and head lumps, breast development other than in a pubertal girl, a few degrees of orthopedic misalignment.

The rarest/pickiest genetic disorders that appeared were neurofibromatosis and Down's. ZERO questions on odd/rare disorders like Diamond-Blackfan, Tay Sachs, Rett, Zellwegers, etc.

My advice is to really study your bread and butter stuff, and don't waste any time reading about rare disorders. If you can do a month of Ambulatory or ER, that's where your money is.

ZERO questions of the unfair/WTF variety. All the questions I missed, I was kicking myself because I should have known it the answer or did know the answer at some point in the past.
 
Previous poster is dead on. Don't focus on rare genetic disorders much as there was none of this on the exam. I was surprised how much of the exam brought back IM concepts. There was more cardio and renal physiology based questions than I suspected. Also, the shelf was a lot more heavy on adolescence than the review books would lead you to believe. I specifically remember 3 questions about common phenomenon in puberty as well as precocious puberty issues, 2 questions on obesity and insulin resistance, and many endocrine related issues. My advice would be to look over adolescent medicine and endo right before the exam. Very little hem/onco and quite a bit of ortho too.
 
Thought I'd toss in my two cents, because this thread was quite helpful to me!

I completely agree with some previous posts to focus on bread & butter. I recall several Common derm issues - varicella was there, target lesions, the mono-penicillin rash. Know Definite contraindications to vaccines, but don't go crazy about all the potential SEs and time frames... not high yield at all.

Speaking of, I think others said this too - Peds shelf is big (I thought) on "stereotypical" questions, "buzzwords" kinda stuff. There were at least 5-7 I can remember that I could answer the question without finishing reading it, or seeing the answers... although I did finish reading it because I'm always nervous I'll be tripped up for a stupid mistake when I did in fact Know the material.

This was my 3rd Shelf and I've gotta say... they love the endocrine! Endocrine questions all over the place (I think it was worst on the IM Shelf so far). Knowing some basic growth normalcies/disorders would be helpful - like constitutional delay versus GH deficiency, by looking at a plotted growth chart. I think I had 1 or 2 of those.

Also, a lot of times if there was a picture, based on the above observations of using buzzwords, you didn't even really need the picture - but it did help to reinforce that you were on the right track.

Bottom line, raw score of 89, was 95th percentile. This was my best Shelf yet, and I didn't go crazy reading:

CaseFiles + First Aid for Peds + Peds Pretest, got through them all once. And paid a lot of attention on rounds, and had some outstanding residents... which I'm sure helped a lot!
 
hi,
has anyone tried using PRER? the questions book for the peds boards? i'm wondering if it is similar to the shelf questions. which question book that you have used is most similar to the shelf?
thanks!
 
yoni said:
hi,
has anyone tried using PRER? the questions book for the peds boards? i'm wondering if it is similar to the shelf questions. which question book that you have used is most similar to the shelf?
thanks!
Click to expand...

i did use the PREP CD and i thought the questions in there were a lot harder than the ones on the shelf; they are after all geared towards residents and clinical management. i don't know if doing it helped me directly on the exam, but it may have helped hone my decision-making skills when it came to certain cases.
 
Definitely one of the harder exams - I just took it - and was like WTF? most of the time - it was bread and butter stuff but with really difficult answer choices - ERG! I missed like upwards of 35-40 questions - hopefully that's okay - oi -and we probably wo'nt know for at least 2 weeks :(

boo:thumbdown:


Update: I got a 79 raw - I don't know what that means -but I do know it means I passed! Woot!
 
Any advice on which books to purchase for Peds and the Peds Shelf?

I've been loaned Blueprints, Oski's Essential Pediatrics, and Rudolph's Fundamentals of Pediatrics.
 
Hey all...just got my score (99, my highest yet) and thought I'd post, since I was successful for a change! :)

I had lots of endocrine (different types of growth delay was especially represented, as I recall), lots of ID, and a few neonate questions (jaundice, a congenital hypothyroid question, ROP, etc). I'd say those were the biggest topics on my test, but really, there was a little of everything. There were also a few random questions where I had NO idea....for example, post-op stuff and trauma (forgot that long ago since surgery was my first rotation).

I think I studied a lot compared to other shelf exams....I read bluprints and as I went through it, did the pretest questions that corresponded. I also read case files. I also printed out pediatrics in review topics for every diagnosis my patients had and made sure to read up on them. About 1.5 weeks before the test, I did all of pre-test and all of case files again, and read a few chapters out of blueprints that I was weak in.

After the test, I seriously thought I failed it. I left feeling THE WORST of all my shelf exams and yet, somehow I managed to do way better. Not trying to show of...but if you leave feeling you bombed it, the "curve" (or whatever they do at the nbme) is generous.

Oh last thing...don't worry so much about all the really rare genetic syndroms that show up in pretest. I think someone has already said it, but the only ones I had on my test were neurofibromatosis and down's syndrome. (And the question stems included the words "cafe au lait spots" and "simian crease!")

Good luck, all!
 
pianoboe01 said:
you Never Took Shelf Exams During 1st Or 2nd Year? Anyway, If You Used Pretest To Study, The Questions Are Typically 2-3x As Long As Those, And Almost Every Question Includes A Bunch Of Labs. If You Don't Have Pretest, Here's An Example Of One Of Their Longer Questions (and Then Multiply It By 2 For Length Of The Real Thing):

A 3-year-old Child Presents To Your Office For An Evaluation Of Constipation. The Mother Notes That Since Birth And Despite Frequent Use Of Stool Softeners, The Child Has Only About One Stool Per Week. He Does Not Have Fecal Soiling Or Diarrhea. He Was Born At Term And Without Pregnancy Complications. The Child Stayed An Extra Day In The Hospital At Birth Because He Did Not Stool For 48 H, But Has Not Been In The Hospital Since. Initial Evaluation Of This Child Should Include
A. A Child Psychiatry Evaluation For Stool Retention And Parenting Assistance
B. A Barium Enema And Rectal Manometry
C. Plain Films Of The Abdomen
D. Dietary Log And Observation
E. Beginning Oral Antispasmotic Medication
Click to expand...


B
 
Last edited:
Just thought I'd add my 2 cents because I read these posts regularly.

I used Blue Prints, Case Files, and First Aid (as more or less a skeleton). They were all decent sources...but I think Blue prints was best for the overall big points. First Aid is about 40% topics that you would never have to know for the shelf...so I just skipped them. I usually like the case files series..but I had the feeling that it did not hit some major topics as it usually does..so I switched to blue prints after going through about 90% of case files.

As usual.. USMLE world was amazing. Kaplan was decent.

As for the test itself.. I only had a few endocrine questions , many fewer than some have said. I think there were a good number of "name that organism" type questions ~ 8 or so... A few acid/base/renal questions and oddly enough about 5 neck/abdominal masses to sort out. I thought that there was a lot less of the bread and butter stuff than people were talking about, but the questions were manageable with the sources I used. Goodluck!
 
I recently took the exam and I wished that I looked at BRS Pediatrics. I only flipped through a few pages and mainly did Blueprints, casefiles, pretest, and PREP. BRS will prepare you very well for the test.
 
Just took the shelf last week. Glad to offer my experience (and will update with my score later)

-Blueprints: Read it 3x. And my reading it, I mean skimming through pictures, boxes, and bolded words. And I skipped the cardiology chapter. Definitely a book to rent and not purchase. The questions at the end are fairly useless.

-Case Files: No one else really likes it at my school but I thought it was great. Definitely nice to carry around while on the floors. Went through this 3x as well with a focus mostly on the questions and the bolded words. Got a couple of questions correct because of Case Files that I wouldn't have caught in my skimming over Blueprints.

-PreTest: Excellent resource. Must buy. Went through this 3x as well. Probably would have been worthwhile to actually read through the answers to both correct and incorrect questions. (I only did the incorrects, was averaging 80-90% by the 3rd go through)

My thought on the exam? Very manageable. Lots of "buzz words" as others have mentioned. I was able to finish with time to spare and even got a chance to review 25 questions (usually I'm working up until the buzzer for my shelfs)

Score: pending (should arrive soon)
 
Bump...
1. How useful are the USMLEWorld questions for the Peds shelf?

2. What's the verdict for text...BluePrints or CaseFiles?

Thanks for the advice...:)
 
Pharmacology hasn't been emphasized much, if at all, in our streamers. Is this something we need to know in great detail for this shelf? If so, to what detail (ie: mechanisms of action, adverse drug reactions, drug-drug interactions, ect)? Thanks for your help!
 
AK_MD2BE said:
Bump...
1. How useful are the USMLEWorld questions for the Peds shelf?

2. What's the verdict for text...BluePrints or CaseFiles?

Thanks for the advice...:)
Click to expand...
Bump. What's the good word on USMLE World?
 
Guile said:
Bump. What's the good word on USMLE W orld?
Click to expand...

The ped shelf was long and hard (with some questions similar to those from Step I and some WTF questions). Little emphasis on pharmacology, although you should probably know the standard treatment for staph, strep, CAP, impetigo, etc.

If I can only choose one, I'd do blueprint. If not, do BP, case file, and pretest, with a big emphasis on pretest (repeat 2x or 3x). Still, I thought I did marginal on the exam when I finished. You probably will too, but ignore that impending sense of doom and just move on to the next clerkship. (Got my score a week ago and turned out I got a 99 raw. go figure.)

p.s. I did read the cardio section on Blueprints. Twice. Not absolutely necessary for this shelf IMO. There were a couple cases in casefile. I think those are easier to digest, and probably sufficient for most purposes.
 
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