Qooo Banq Questionzz

[realruby2000]

So im just browsing through some questions in the micro section and im constantly being bombarded with organisms i've never even heard of!! stuff like Bartonella henselae thats not even in First Aid or even discussed in class. I've even seen some organisms not in Clinical micro made rid. simple. Do these types of mystery organisms really show up on boards or is Kaplan qbank designed to be more difficult? Is this true for all the other sections as well???

thanks

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[Kalel]

I thought that q bank was pretty reflective of the actual exam in terms of difficulty. However, I do also recall running into questions with answers that were not covered in the review books. I'd just ignore these questions; there were only a few of them a few years ago when I did q bank.

 

[Meritina]

I knew the mystery bugs pretty good and did very well in the Micro part. Occasionally I saw these types of bugs in answer choices. Usually (but I won't saw always!!) they were not the correct answer

 

[Idiopathic]

Some of them have interesting significance tho...like Bartonella mimics Kaposis sarcoma, but organisms show up on a silver stain. That was always one of my favorites.

 

[kutastha]

Like I've said on other threads - Qbank is reeeeeally picky. But Bartonella's one of those that should be known, I'd say. With it's unique presentation and having the title of a Ted Nugent song, it's a gotta-know.

I got a q on the real thing and only had to guess it was the one I'd never heard of because the presentation described didn't fit the other choices.

 

[Goofyone]

Originally posted by realruby2000
So im just browsing through some questions in the micro section and im constantly being bombarded with organisms i've never even heard of!! stuff like Bartonella henselae thats not even in First Aid or even discussed in class. I've even seen some organisms not in Clinical micro made rid. simple. Do these types of mystery organisms really show up on boards or is Kaplan qbank designed to be more difficult? Is this true for all the other sections as well???

thanks

I've noticed there are quite a few bugs not in MRS micro!

 

[realruby2000]

what do you guys say about other subjects like path/pathophys and pharm?

 

[Kalel]

Originally posted by realruby2000
what do you guys say about other subjects like path/pathophys and pharm?

I'd say that q bank was usually right on the money in terms of level of difficulty and topics covered on the USMLE for those subjects. I only recall having a few questions that were out in left field (similar to the micro questions); for the most part, they were fair, representative (sometimes almost too "similar" to questions seen on the actual USMLE to make me think that there wasn't some question stealing going on) questions.

 

[kutastha]

Originally posted by realruby2000
what do you guys say about other subjects like path/pathophys and pharm?

I say lots of Pathophys, very little pharm (I had about 10-15 questions on pharm).

 

[NebelDO]

i thought everybody would go over Bartonella--cat scratch disease. I know that last year our Micro professor made a point to go over all the "wacky bugs". He also would go through the kaplan books and see what was in there make sure that he covered extra stuff that we might see..

this has carried over into our second year in that our pathology professors(which are a husband and wife tag team which is cool)
they have really done a good job of giving us all the "nuggets" that go along with all the syndromes..

i guess as far as first aid and brs..i think they want to make sure that you can take care of staph and strep and the other important ones cause you will see more of them.

the others you can look up easy.

 

[Kalel]

Originally posted by NebelDO
i thought everybody would go over Bartonella--cat scratch disease. I know that last year our Micro professor made a point to go over all the "wacky bugs". He also would go through the kaplan books and see what was in there make sure that he covered extra stuff that we might see..

Whoops, you are correct. Cat Scratch disease is definitely something that you should know for the USMLE as it is fairly common. If it's not in first aid, it's almost definitely in Micro made ridiculously simple OP. I actually found my class notes and charts were the most useful resource for micro now that I think about it, first aid wasn't really sufficient for micro and I didn't feel like reading CMMRS cover to cover (although it is doable). You should definitely memorize some of the CMMRS' fancy mneumonics, they have very clever ways of getting you to remember stuff.