Will I at least pass the Surgical shelf with this regimen?

[Phange]

I'm doing Pestana Audio + associated Kaplan Review book. Then I'll do the Uworld Qbank surgery questions and associated Internal Medicine questions and PreTest Surgery.

I'm only four weeks out and I'm almost halfway done with Pestana. Should finish all of it in one or two days from now. I feel simultaneously ahead of the ball and way behind, since i didn't really start studying for the shelf until now, and even now it's just minor study (with weekends being the bulk of the studying).

I just don't have the time or the patience for a textbook. NMS is too information dense, and Lawrence is unacceptably verbose.

I'm concerned that Pestana focuses heavily on trauma and not enough on typical Medicine. Qbank only has ~160 surgery-specific questions, and PreTest has a lot of questions that are far more surgical-procedure-specific than they should be. There seems to be no happy medium with any study source.

I just want to pass and be done with it. I did pretty well on Step 1 and I don't want to fail any shelf. I got DIT for Step 2 since it worked very well for me on Step 1, but it won't open until next year.

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[Phange]

Also, before I started Pestana I flew into Uworld Qbank Surgery blind and was only scoring anywhere from 40% to 60% - usually closer to 40%. That's clearly not good enough, but to be fair it was solely with knowledge that I brought from just taking Step 1 recently.

 

[evilbooyaa]

Unfortunately there is no source of a lot of surgery questions that aren't in excessive detail.

Consider adding SUTM GI/Fluids/Electrolytes (and corresponding UWorld questions) to your regimen.

 

[Rebs28]

You'll be fine. I got honors on the exam last year with just Pestana, Kaplan, and UWorld, and I'm by no means a genius.