Official Pediatrics Shelf Exam Thread

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enanareina said:
Vaccines: NO. Learn when a vaccination is truly contraindicated and some of the really serious vaccine reactions. In other words, "My kid has a 99 degree fever" is not a contraindication.

Reflexes: A few important ones only, like Babinski until ~walking age, moro/root/suck at birth.

Blueprints: Generally, people are referring to the review text book, not the question book. I had both Blueprints and First Aid and I found them pretty similar. I preferred Case Files.

Developmental Milestones: Really big ones only. I'd learn a few key phrases off the Denver to tell if a child is 2 versus 3. There will only be 1-2 questions on this topic (see the NBME shelf exam breakdown) so don't go berserk and try to memorize the whole Denver.

It's too late for whomever asked this question originally, but hopefully this will help someone else!
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Anyone have any an updated idea of what books to use? What is Pre-Test?So far I've had Family Medicine and Cardio, and have used Case-files, boards and wards, and first aid. Sounds like questions are really the way to go? What is the best resource for questions?
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That shelf was HARD. Questions out of nowhere, nothing like Pretest or Case Files. Closest was Kaplan's Qbook questions really. Found it very difficult.
 
Theres a brand new NMS pediatric book coming out in a week or so. They condensed it by 300 pages! I wonder what they ripped out to shorten it that much. Anyways I'm thinking of picking it up and trusting it for my shelf.
 
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I just got my shelf score back for peds- it was my first shelf.

I used NMS, pretest and the A&L question book. I had looked at blueprints but didnt think that it went in depth enough. In the end I dont really know what to tell you guys. I was surprised by the amt of trauma on my shelf- I just wasnt expecting it and since I hadnt had surgery or medicine yet it kinda caught me by surprise. There were a lot fewer congential infections, neonatal issues and the day-in-day-out issues than I was expecting.

Outside of reviewing some trauma stuff, I dont really think there was too much else I could have done. Pre-test, while good to hammer home some main points wasnt much like the real test. Neither was A&L. I would rate pretest better than A&L but not as good as everyone at my school made it out to be. Personally I think Blueprints + pretest wouldnt be a terrible choice but it's not the powerhouse that people make it out to be.

Finally the vignettes were long- i mean LOOONNNNG. I normally finish tests very early. I finished each section of the boards with around 5 minutes to spare. I cruised through this exam, didnt really ponder too many questions and barely made it to the end. I came out feeling much worse than I did after the boards.

My score ended up being more than a standard deviation higher than the national mean.
 
really? Trauma questions?

ok so should I pick up some surgery book (people say kaplan is good) and give trauma section a good read?

I don't get it. I am NOT seeing any trauma cases where I am rotating, but have senn all the garden variety + CF + leukemia and what not. Stuff that would make sense to be on the shelf NOT TRAUMA! wtf
 
Instatewaiter said:
I just got my shelf score back for peds- it was my first shelf.

I used NMS, pretest and the A&L question book. I had looked at blueprints but didnt think that it went in depth enough. In the end I dont really know what to tell you guys. I was surprised by the amt of trauma on my shelf- I just wasnt expecting it and since I hadnt had surgery or medicine yet it kinda caught me by surprise. There were a lot fewer congential infections, neonatal issues and the day-in-day-out issues than I was expecting.

Outside of reviewing some trauma stuff, I dont really think there was too much else I could have done. Pre-test, while good to hammer home some main points wasnt much like the real test. Neither was A&L. I would rate pretest better than A&L but not as good as everyone at my school made it out to be. Personally I think Blueprints + pretest wouldnt be a terrible choice but it's not the powerhouse that people make it out to be.

Finally the vignettes were long- i mean LOOONNNNG. I normally finish tests very early. I finished each section of the boards with around 5 minutes to spare. I cruised through this exam, didnt really ponder too many questions and barely made it to the end. I came out feeling much worse than I did after the boards.

My score ended up being more than a standard deviation higher than the national mean.
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what is the national mean? where do you find such information? Is there a conversion to national percentiles? Please advise. thanks!
 
InternationlDoc said:
really? Trauma questions?

ok so should I pick up some surgery book (people say kaplan is good) and give trauma section a good read?

I don't get it. I am NOT seeing any trauma cases where I am rotating, but have senn all the garden variety + CF + leukemia and what not. Stuff that would make sense to be on the shelf NOT TRAUMA! wtf
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It wouldnt be a bad idea if you have some extra time to review a chapter on trauma/acute management. You will probably be fine if you have had surgery or medicine already.

Yeah there were a lot more acute cases than i expected. Everyone in my group came out of the shelf and were dumbfounded by the type of questions they asked. It just felt very random. I am not sure if more studying would have helped me much.

Of course there were a lot of "child with projectile vomiting and olive sized mass in epigastrium" questions but not as many as I would have expected. There were also a few questions where it asked the next step in management and a, b and c would all be done at the exact same time in real life.
 
I heard that the Blueprints cardio chapter isn't very good, so I skipped it. Do you guys recommend reading it and if not, what source did you use to supplement that section?

ANy help would be great..
 
cgk said:
Where can I see this published? Are there statistics for the other shelf exams?
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It's on the NBME website. Look it up.

DMBFan said:
I heard that the Blueprints cardio chapter isn't very good, so I skipped it. Do you guys recommend reading it and if not, what source did you use to supplement that section?

ANy help would be great..
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Honestly, I didnt have any of the confusing cardio stuff on the exam. The one congenital cardio question I had was one of the matching ones and the answer was "cyanotic heart disease." You didnt even have to figure out which one it was. The blue prints chapter isnt terrible, but its a bit dense.

So if you dont have time, dont waste your time on the cardio section.
I have heard similar things on SDN. I dont think anyone has said the congenital heart disease stuff is very high yield.

I just didnt feel comfortable leaving it by the wayside and leaving me open to getting railed if there were a bunch of questions on my exam.
 
Does anyone have any idea if doing all of the uworld questions and reading most of case files is enough to pass the shelf (get around the average). I know i sound like a slaker, but I just don't like peds and have had the rotation from hell due to mean residents and attendings (I thought pediatricians were supposed to be nice?)
 
sunshinedoc said:
Does anyone have any idea if doing all of the uworld questions and reading most of case files is enough to pass the shelf (get around the average). I know i sound like a slaker, but I just don't like peds and have had the rotation from hell due to mean residents and attendings (I thought pediatricians were supposed to be nice?)
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I feel you. The reality is doing the case files alone will be better than the Pre-Test alone. In fact the Peds Pre-Test in highly over-rated. It seems like the only consistent source is BluePrints, which i never used due to lack of time.

Kaplan Peds has all the information there, and case files too. Although Kaplan is a terrible read. Please underline terrible. :)

Regarding Clipp Cases, this is the worst and most pathetic review system ever. The end .pdf file is the only good information along with the links provided along each case. But the reality is it is too time consuming for whatever benefit you may obtain from it.


Just my 2 cents.
 
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Just got my score back on this beast and did well enough to qualify for honors- now, its just a matter of waiting to see if I did enough on the floor to justify that grade LOL ;)

What I used:

Case Files- fantastic, know this cold
Blueprints- good read, some chapters are completely worthless though
Pretest- excellent, I didn't do a couple of the specialty chapters but I did most of it
Appleton and Lange- this was alright, not as good as Pretest because of some silly questions but still solid

I didn't really study too much for this shelf but being on the floor really, really helped. Honestly, you can see a lot on the floor and it really sticks with you. I had a lot of questions relating to management of croup and RSV bronchiolitis, something I saw a ton of since I was in the rotation right at the start of winter. Learn on the floor and use some of these resource and you'll be in good shape.
 
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I personally can't stand the Blueprints, Case Files, and A&L series.

I used First Exposure: Pediatrics (read 2x during rotation), USMLEWorld Q's, and Kaplan Qbook (3 peds tests) and got an 82 on the shelf.
 
first time i ever to get to brag on SDN, haha. i read through casefiles x 2, blueprints x 1, did all 31 CLIPP cases, and did all of pre-test x 2. out of all these, i felt that pre-test was the best and casefiles was good for bringing things together. scored 91% raw, 98th percentile. now let's see if i can rock the IM shelf in two weeks...
 
Anyone use BRS Pediatrics recently? It seems pretty decent, but it is quite long...

Thanks in advance! :)
 
Sara010 said:
Anyone use BRS Pediatrics recently? It seems pretty decent, but it is quite long...

Thanks in advance! :)
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I used BRS Peds for my clerkship. It is a monster of a book! It covers a lot of stuff you don't need to know for the shelf (like rare genetic syndromes) but also covers everything you do. Peds was my second shelf and I walked out thinking that BRS was completely useless and ended up with an 86 (~2 std dev above mean). I am not one of the 43+ MCATers who knocks tests out of the park so either the curve is extremely nice or BRS actually does what it promises...or both. Either way, it is pretty helpful, just don't get bogged down in trying to remember all of the small details like I did, none of it was on the shelf. Oh, and it was the only textbook I used and I paired it with PreTest and occasionally Case Files as question books.
 
Got scores back. Raw of 92.

Course used Blueprints as text (mehh..)
Reviewed boxed items in Blueprints and did the review question.
One pass through Pre-Test.
Got about half way through Case Files and wish I'd finished it.

Test is really heavy on buzz-words.
 
91 Raw.

This thread hasn't been updated in ages! What's up? Is no one writing the peds exam any more? I read over all the info on this forum, plus other devoted to the topic. I had about 3 weeks of study time.

Resources: Case Files Peds, BRS Pediatrics, UWorld.

I would recommend only BRS Peds and Uworld. I would not use Case Files, simply because a) BRS Peds is EXCELLENT - in fact, as a textbook it is quite good. Definitively helped me understand topics like RTA1/2/4 better with clinically relevant stuff that I can still recall and apply on CTU. Excellent section on infectious disease, though for your own learning it is better to flush out some broad topics like pharyngitis, pneumonia etc. with Nelsons/a good ID book. b) Case Files is not sufficient. I think 3 weeks is plenty of time to read BRS cover to cover if you're disciplined or you're lucky enough to have an outpatient rotation before the exam. Lastly there was material on the shelf directly from BRS - I mean if you read the bold text then you'd get the answer right. That simple.

UWorld questions were good as always.

You'd think I must be getting money for flaunting it so..but I'm not. I just LOVED BRS! Go try it and put your Blueprints/Casefiles in the dustbin. I used Casefiles all year, and if there were a BRS for Internal I would buy it 100%.

Good luck you guys and so long NBME hell...
 
Hey guys,

It seems like the (few) people that used BRS peds loved it. Do you think BRS peds + UW + Pretest is a solid combo? Should I throw Blueprints into the mix as it seems to be the most popular? I haven't started rotations yet, so I'm not even sure that would be possible to do in 8 weeks. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
 
Im still a bit confused about the scoring, so do I need 70/100 right for the mean? Or is that a 70 score that has been scaled?
 
The "70" is a scaled score. The NBME website alludes to the fact that it is not 70/100 right but rather they change your score into a scaled one making the mean around a 70 and the StD around an 8. They then call that scaled score a "raw score" for some reason.
 
Instatewaiter said:
The "70" is a scaled score. The NBME website alludes to the fact that it is not 70/100 right but rather they change your score into a scaled one making the mean around a 70 and the StD around an 8. They then call that scaled score a "raw score" for some reason.
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Thanks, that is odd though that they call it a raw score.
 
Hello,

So right now I've been using Blueprints/Casefiles along with a lot of random learning on the floors.

I need to get an 82+ on the shelf to honor. I am considering using Uworld instead of pre-test. Any suggestions? I typically learn best by doing tons of practice questions. Do you think i would be at a disadvantage to not use pre-test when it seems that everyone else is?

Thanks
 
So is NMS for Peds pretty good? I know it's really dense but it seems like it covers a lot of the trauma and management of acute cases better than Blueprints. Any comments? Did anyone feel like this book was a waste of time?
 
How's Kaplan (text not questions)? Anyone used it?
 
snakesonaplane said:
Anyone?...Bueller?
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There are several people on here who think BRS was really good... A couple seem to mention that it ha a lot that wasn't on there but that it had everything that WAS on there.
 
snakesonaplane said:
So is NMS for Peds pretty good? I know it's really dense but it seems like it covers a lot of the trauma and management of acute cases better than Blueprints. Any comments? Did anyone feel like this book was a waste of time?
Click to expand...

Guile said:
There are several people on here who think BRS was really good... A couple seem to mention that it ha a lot that wasn't on there but that it had everything that WAS on there.
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I used NMS because it was longer than blueprints and peds was my first clerkship.

NMS was long and wasn't all that great. If you already have it, might as well use it but I wouldnt recommend going out of your way to get it. Frankly, i felt BRS and NMS were not structured like you need for the shelf exams. They were more text book like and less clinically relevant. They also werent great review books.

I would rate NMS 6/10.
 
So is Casefiles enough to possibly honor? Both BRS and Casefiles are ~600pgs long and so I don't think I can read both.
 
I hear that the peds shelf is a beast and that even Case Files + Pretest isn't enough...
 
If you took Step 1 recently, you should not worry too much about the Peds shelf. A lot of the material on that was basically from my Boards studying (congenital infections, most common bacterial infections, congenital heart defects, etc). If it's been a while since you took the boards, perhaps one of the books listed in this thread will be useful to you. I found the Kaplan USMLE Step 2 lecture notes to be more than adequate. If you do some searching you may be able to find a downloadable (free) version somewhere on the internet.

In terms of question sources. I did all of the Pretest pediatrics and USMLE World pediatrics questions. I found them both to be very comparable to the questions on the Shelf, both in terms of vignette length and question difficulty. Some of the sections in Pretest aren't as good (respiratory - I coudn't even understand what some of the questions were asking).
 
Any guesses on how many you need right out of 100 (x/100) for the mean? Just trying to get a handle on how good/bad the scale is?
 
For some reason my raw score on the exam (high 70s) is higher than the percentile (low 70s).

i thought it was usually the reverse!

anyone else experience that?
 
I just took my peds shelf today and was very distraught over not finishing in time. I had to scramble to try and finish and I still left 5-6 unanswered. Every question stem was at least 2 paragraphs and many had lab values as well. Did anyone else struggle to finish?? And is it better to leave questions blank if you don't have time to finish them or better to fill in bubbles?? :eek:
 
Everyone seems to have trouble finishing this beast.

I don't believe there's a penalty for wrong answers...so you have nothing to lose by filling in bubbles.
 
Do you think FA Peds + Pretest + Uworld = good score on shelf?
 
I've heard FA Peds is a waste of time.
 
I think the UW Peds questions are the best preparation for the shelf (definitely way better than Blueprints, First Aid, Case Files, Pretest, all of which I looked at sometime during my rotation). I didn't have any exact repeats from World, but some questions were so close that it makes you wonder...
 
Whats_up_doc said:
Care to elaborate?
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I would disagree that FA Peds is a waste of time. It's a solid outline, and you could probably use it if your school has a strong curriculum to supplement it. USMLE World is just better, as long as you read all the explanations and don't just use it you quiz yourself.
 
metallo said:
I would disagree that FA Peds is a waste of time. It's a solid outline, and you could probably use it if your school has a strong curriculum to supplement it. USMLE World is just better, as long as you read all the explanations and don't just use it you quiz yourself.
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I just had a friend who used FA Peds, knew it well (and is a smart guy) and said it was a waste of time after taking the shelf. I respect his opinion, so I was passing it along. Feel free to use it. Be sure to let us know how it works out for you if you do.
 
metallo said:
I would disagree that FA Peds is a waste of time. It's a solid outline, and you could probably use it if your school has a strong curriculum to supplement it. USMLE World is just better, as long as you read all the explanations and don't just use it you quiz yourself.
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Another important point is that knowing peds well (i.e. knowing FA Peds which seems like a pretty good, thorough text) does NOT equate to doing well on the peds shelf.
 
Just got my scores back and I got a 92 (99 percentile), so I guess my study method worked. This was my first shelf so I can't really compare it to any others.

Questions- I did all the uworld questions and read every single explanation. I also did some appleton and lange questions and read those explanations. I think this was the highest yield.

Reading- I did the peds section of Deja Review Step 2. Read some case files and the stuff our school gave us. Plus the reading I did on my patients.
 
pretest x2, reading on important/common conditions during rotation. had case files, forgot i had it in my bag til a few days before test, so i did the first handful of cases. this was my first rotation.

95 raw. few lucky guesses i suppose
 
juiceman311 said:
pretest x2, reading on important/common conditions during rotation. had case files, forgot i had it in my bag til a few days before test, so i did the first handful of cases. this was my first rotation.

95 raw. few lucky guesses i suppose
Click to expand...
And apparently the Kaplan videos, at the expense of thousands of dollars, eh?
 
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