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This guide contains information on the resources the library has for preparing for the USMLE Step 2.
AOA Guidance
Big Points
Try and think about what worked or did not work for you in your first two years and adapt that to your studying now. It is recommended that you try to study every night when you get home. On some rotations that may not seem realistic, but at the very least try to do a little bit each night. This will prevent you from having to cram a few days before your shelf. It is incredibly important to start studying early for your shelf exams! Your time is spent mainly at the hospital in the third year and clinical duties take precedence over studying, so utilize your time wisely!
Shelf Exams: In general, the questions will present you with a case vignette with lab/radiology findings and from there ask you one of a few common questions. The most common questions are: “what is the diagnosis,” “what is the next step in diagnosis/treatment,” “what is the pathogenesis of this disease,” “what was the patient treated with,” or “what is the physician’s most appropriate response to this question.” The first two years of medical school were based on “what is it?” In the third year, the focus shifts to “We know you know what is going on here, but what do we do about it?” So, when you’re studying get into the frame of mind of wondering how you would diagnose something, or what’s the next step in the management of a certain disease.
Step 2 CK UWorld QBank: Useful for IMed and Step 2 prep, but there are questions for most of the rotations. Most people use this as their main practice question source.
Online Med Ed: A series of free videos. There is also a paid version to get notes, download the videos, and access a Qbank. These are a great resource for all rotations, especially if you’re the type of person that learns by listening.
Emma Holliday Videos: A series of free lectures. Very good for review the day before your shelf exam. The slides have disappeared behind a password-protected wall, but the videos are available via YouTube.
Practice NBME Exams: Practice exams (called the Clinical Skills Mastery Series) that you can buy for each shelf. Many people use these to gauge where they are before the exam. Forms are also available for Step 2 prep as well.
USMLE Easy / PreTest: Another question bank useful for neurology, family medicine, and pediatrics clerkships.
Amboss: Practice questions with some unique features (such as a "what should I pay attention to in the question stem" highlighter).
AOA - "Access this through the NYMC library website and make sure you download it on your phone. This is a great resource for reading up on your patients, and also for preparing for presentations you may give. In some cases, you can go a little too deep down the rabbit hole and get deeper into things than you need to as a student, but in general it is very useful."
AOA - "This is a great app for looking up drugs, and drug interactions. They also have a lot of calculators that are very useful on the floors. You’ll need to make a free account."
AOA - "The worst name in history, but a very useful app. You can plug in age, sex, pregnancy status, smoking status, and sexual activity for your patients and the app tells you what screening is recommended using the guidelines from the USPSTF."
AOA - "You can use this to plug in patient data, and the app gives you their overall cardiovascular risk, which is especially useful on the IM and Family Med rotations (where you will be seeing patients on cholesterol lowering therapies)."
AOA - "This app will take chief complaints and give you a differential. Good if you get stuck on things; in terms of learning, it’s probably best to come up with your own differentials first and then use this to fill in any gaps."
CanopyLearn is an online, self-paced eLearning platform that offers the most robust medical Spanish and medical English curriculum, tailored for healthcare professionals based on everyday clinical encounters. It combines medical terms, Spanish learning foundations, and cultural knowledge together in every lesson. CanopySpeak is a freemium smart medical phrase mobile app. It contains over 5,000 pre-translated medical phrases in over 15 languages, including Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, French, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Portuguese, etc.
The current COVID-19 pandemic is affecting healthcare institutions in ways that may disrupt the training of future health care professionals. It is more important than ever to ensure that the community has access to high quality educational materials to ensure trainee preparedness for these clinical and global health challenges.This collection features peer-reviewed teaching resources that can be used for distance learning, including self-directed modules and learning activities that could be converted to virtual interactions. As always, the resources are free to download and free for adaptation to local settings. The collection will be reviewed and updated regularly.
Global Medicine offers a number of online courses for physicians and healthcare providers to improve patient care for globally mobile populations including immigrants, refugees, and travelers, as well as to gain expertise in the diagnosis and treatments of tropical infectious and noninfectious diseases. You can complete all of our online courses at your own pace. Global Medicine courses are asynchronous - meaning you don’t have to attend online classes at a specific time. Our courses are developed by faculty and technologists who understand the specific needs of learners in an online environment. We continue to integrate new technologies into our courses to support our online learners.
FreeCME.com has provided the broadest range of free continuing education available for more than a decade. Healthcare professionals come to us knowing they will find activities that consistently meet their continuing education requirements: easy to use web portal makes it easy to find courses and track credits; accredited activities for over 30 medical specialties; over 100 active courses at any given time. Activity accreditations include ACCME, ANCC, AANP, ACPE, and more. Most importantly, our content is always current, and always free.
Medscape's online medical simulations provide real-world scenarios and patient interactions to enable healthcare professionals to practice and learn in a safe, true-to-life environment.
Don’t let emergency medicine stump you. Learn how to perform some of the most essential procedures in emergency medicine—from lumbar punctures and vertigo maneuvers to transvenous pacing and defibrillation—so you can diagnose and treat important conditions with confidence. We’ll teach you when to use which procedure, how to perform it safely, and how to troubleshoot common complications.
More than 100 sample Step 2 Clinical Knowledge (CK) CK test questions are available in both PDF format and as an interactive testing experience. Examples of different types of competencies tested on the Step 2 CK examination are provided.
Step 2 practice tests featuring multiple-choice questions on content typically covered during the core clinical clerkships. In addition to helping you gain a familiarity with NBME-style questions, the Comprehensive Clinical Science Self-Assessment enables you to: evaluate your readiness to take the USMLE Step 2 CK; target your studies using diagnostic feedback highlighting areas of strength and weakness; view answer explanations to reinforce your knowledge and maximize study time; use your self-assessment score to estimate your approximate score on the USMLE score scale.
Helpful podcast on Step 1 and Step 2 topics. High yield review with additional resources. Recent additions on Step 2: Palliative Care, Quality and Safety, and Ethics.
Health Systems Science now brings you fully up to date with today’s key issues and solutions. This branch of health care explores how health care is delivered, how health care professionals work together to deliver that care, and how the health system can improve patient care and health care delivery. Along with basic and clinical sciences, health systems science emphasizes the understanding the role of human factors, systems engineering, leadership, and patient improvement strategies that will help transform the future of health care and ensure greater patient safety.
