Customer Reviews

Kaplan Medical USMLE Examination Flashcards: The 200 ""Most Likely Diagnosis"" Questions You Will See on the Exam for Steps 2 & 3

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

These cards are great for the wards when you have down time even if for 5 minutes. Great for distinguishing differential diagnoses with a single symptom difference. Must have. Combine with cards for Physical findings (great for murmurs and EKG) and Diagnostic tests. Pharmocology cards arent as useful for step 2.

I thought this is such an excellent study tool especially in companion to Kaplan videos or Kaplan lecture notes. It covers the same tops in the Kaplan text books but it's extremely high yield. Even if you dont have Kaplan its excellent with a supplement book and a great way to review what you know after you just read a particular chapter. It asks you what would be the diagnosis if certain factors would change, and they keep changing one symptom to see what the new diagnosis is. Its a great way to differentiate diseases and be specific in your differentials.

Excellent product! Definitely use this to supplement your readings. Drill these cards daily until you not only memorize them, but understand them. You will pick up questions on the exam from these cards (if you understand them).

Warning: this cards alone are insufficient to pass the exam..so use a primary source! (My suggestion is Passing USMLE CK** see review on this product).


Suggested additional materials:
Kaplan Notes ** (overly detailed, if you can read it all, it's well worth your time..but again, it is long and hard to get through)
Kaplan Ethics!**(excellent, if you don't do them...you are giving up at least 7-10 questions)

Best of Luck!

Creditably:
B- in English
3.8 GPA in medical school
241/99 Step 1
245/99 Step 2

Very nice tool to review the most important diagnosis. Very helpful if you wanna keep in your mind the main characteristics of each disease and answer the questions of "the most likely diagnosis" "the next best step" and "the most accurate test". I highly recommend this flash cards.

These are great! It's just enough information and it's presented in an easy to study/remember format. These saved me a ton of time. Seriously, just buy them.

I must admit that I was getting a bit frustrated with the "classical" approach to studying for the boards (i.e. First Aid + qBanks). Although some people have marvelous memory and may not require reading the First Aid ten times before memorizing 60% of it, for most normal normal people, it takes a huge amount of effort to memorize it and to keep the information for very long is even harder (I was feeling like pushing something in and bumping something out). I know, you gotta understand the topics...but it is impossible to understand it until you have memorized the foundations, and just that can be a battle. Furthermore, the boards test the amount of details you can keep as well (unfortunately it seems like it is an easy way to stratify people). That's where these cards (together with the Pharmacology and Treatment cards) contribute the most. The cards contain short (yet complete) clinical cases with simple explanations for the 200 most common cases found on the board. The explanations are just what you need for the boards and, because the cards are so short, one can go over the whole set multiple times over a period of just a few days (with a bit of effort one can review the whole set of 200 cards twice a day). The first time you read it, it is going to be slow (and it should), but after that, it only takes less than a minute per cards That given, one must admit that there are a lot of typos on the cards (Note for Kaplan - Please fix that for the next edition). This can be a little bit annoying but is not enough to make the cards less useful (hence the five stars). The contents are just right and I know that typos just happen (don't expect to find perfect spelling on the medical notes you'll see at the hospital as well).

This flash cards are awesome. I have a very busy lifestyle.
I carry them in My purse to glance thru where ever I go. Sometimes,
if I am carrying a smaller purse, I take a few organ systems with me.
This cards are so informative. I wish I invested in them earlier in this career.
plus I get to use them for step 3......awesome. I plan on buying the ones for
diagnostic test.

For someone that is really in a hurry those cards are good. However, I would recommend to save the money and buy an on-line Q-bank.

Really gets you in exam mode. Helps the transition from Step 1 memorization questions to step 2/3 clinical thinking. It gives you one possible scenerio, then changes it a little bit and asked the same question again, several times, kind of like the Pestana surgery questions, but not quite as detailed. The podcast that comes with it is stupid though, it's like 20 minutes and pointless. The cards are magazine paper thin though, which I was fine with because it had several questions on each card so you can't really flip through them terribly quick to crinkle them that bad. A lot of mock exams I took had similar questions which was nice.

The USMLE does not merely test recalling medical knowledge but more so the ability of the physician/med student to apply that medical knowledge that s/he knows in clinical vignette setting. That involves critical reasoning. Of course, the best way to sharpen your critical thinking skills is through question banks.

Yet Dr. Conrad Fischer's 4 decks of flaschards (Examination, Physical Findings, Diagnostic Tests & Treatment) are excellent supplements to help you engage in active learning and training your mind to think.

The Examination cards deal with the prototypical (albeit, simpler) case scenarios that are tested on the exam. Simplicity of the cases is to reinforce key words to look for on the exam. The questions that follow revolve around "What is the most likely diagnosis?" but there are many questions that deal with "the best initial test", "the most accurate test" and "the best initial therapy".

The other sets of flashcards plunge further into the specific questions that are tested, namely those dealing with various physical findings, diagnostic tests, and treatment.

Bottom line: these USMLE flaschards are nothing short of pure excellence in medical education.