Customer Reviews

Surgery: PreTest Self-Assessment and Review

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

 

 

Pretest now has standalone programs of the books (not the cumbersome pdf files). It is interactive in that it lets you choose your answer and gives you immediate feedback with right and wrong choices (no need flipping through pages), allows you to review missed answers, randomize questions and answer choices. Basically, it's a lot like qbank for third year. I used the palm version for surgery and loved it because I always had my palm with me and could do questions while I was waiting for an attending to finally scrub into a case. You'd be surprised at how small little bits of time add up! I finished pretest while only doing questions at the hospital in less than two weeks.

Although the questions sometimes get too detailed for purposes of Step 2 - type exams, the explanations are excellent and tend to cover more basic facts. This atones for the occasional question that states, "current research states ..." and puts it in the grasp of most medical students. This is a good book to cover (or at least sample) if you are taking NBMLE shelf exams.

I don't normally write reviews for books but this was just inexcusable. I (a medical student) was using this book to study for my shelf exam in surgery and I couldn't believe how many mistakes there were in the answers section! Many of the explanations of the questions would clearly seem to say that the answer was, for example, (A) but then the answer listed would be (D). I assume these were all printing errors or something like that. Don't get me wrong, the explanations in this book are great and really helped, but it ended up taking me much longer than expected to go through the answers because I would really have to spend some time figuring out which answer was the REAL answer according to the explanation. And actually there was one explanation that was as far as I know completely wrong, but that may just be due to an outdated question.

In summary, really, with this being the 10th edition of Pretest Surgery, the number of errors in the answer section is really inexcusable. The book did help but I am sure there are other question books out there that may be better. While I generally like the pretest series, I would recommend waiting for the 11th Edition or get another book in this case. Using this book was just plain too annoying.

Throughout med school I've found the best way to learn is to just do questions. This is a solid way to study for the surgery shelf. There are 500+ questions in this book, not every question is going to have a perfect explanation or be a broad based topic, but for the most part they hit the most tested topics. Yes, some questions can be nit picky, but who cares, just shrug and move on. If you use this in conjunction with Case Files and MAYBE First Aid Surgery you'll be pretty prepared for the shelf. Also, I bought this version as opposed to the newest version to save >$20, well worth it to me.

In brief, I used the Ob-Gyn, Psychiatry, and Peds pre-tests for my shelf exams. Thus, I picked up a copy of this book to study for my surgery shelf. I was very disappointed.

Problems:
-This book beyond the level of a third- or fourth-year medical student. The questions are too detailed and esoteric. I think even a surgical intern or resident would have a hard time with these questions.

-Many of the explanations are convoluted, and there is no clear cut answer given in the actual explanation. I will echo the sentiment that the explanations seem contradictory, and you are often left wondering, "Why is my answer wrong then?" after reading an explanation.

I advise using the other PreTest books, but clearly this text is not worth your time.

content was amazing- much more than what is tested on the actual shelf, but if you know pretest, you'll do very well on the shelf.
this book actually had more underlining in it than i expected, but none of the answers were marked so that was good.
better than case files for the NBME shelf

I found many answers which were miskeyed as well as some that were confusing and internally contradictory. I even looked up some of the textbook references, and the answers weren't there either!