 What is going on family a luxury from the MD journey helping you succeed on your medical journey with less stress this video I am taking my last board exam of my medical school career. I am so excited So I'm taking my step two CS exam on Friday today's Tuesday So in this video, I'm gonna show you kind of how I study what the test is about and then record my reaction After the test and so hopefully you guys get a kick out of this one if you do give this video a like and if you so desire give the Channel a chance by subscribing, but no more time to waste. Let's get to the intro All right guys, so hopefully you guys are excited to follow me on my step two journey So this is my step two CS if you're not familiar There's two parts of step two one is called CK that's your clinical knowledge and one's called like your clinical sciences It's basically how this part when I'm taking CS is how well you apply your knowledge in front of the patient So how can you do going into a room gathering a history taking a physical exam and then writing a note and then putting Altogether to come up with a workout for a patient. That is exactly what step two CS is It is a test where you go for eight hours Maybe nine and it's like 12 patients and you see one after another after another and you just do it for the whole day It's not a multiple choice exam by any means you go in you say hi to the patient You get the history take a physical exam really quickly all this is like within 15 minutes And then you go ahead and like write a note just the way you would for a normal patient You see I like the clinic and you would do a work up or you would kind of write what work up you would do It's a pass fail exam. So there's no real great to it And most students do pretty well at least pass and so that is what I'm going for So I'm gonna show you guys throughout the week kind of how I study I'm gonna start with today on Tuesday kind of breaking down what my study plan is and then Wednesday Thursday I'll show you kind of how I review and Friday is test day So I will show you kind of how the test went so you guys enjoy the video But let me show you on my computer kind of how I'm studying for step two. All right guys So we are in my computer and I'm gonna show you exactly kind of how I'm studying for my step two CS So I use a book that many med students use which is called first stage for the step two CS exam I have an online or a PDF version. So This because that's how I prefer reading my text But this book is nice because it has various amounts of cases. I believe like 44 Let me get to a page. That's kind of nice So this is kind of what I'm doing in regards to studying. There's two styles of cases that have these many exams many cases where They kind of give you like a two to three liner of a vignette on a patient that would potentially come in with These are these complaints like a headache a dizziness and then I'll show you all the different diagnosis You should consider so here's the headache section And here's a different Presentations a patient may come in with and then the differential is you should probably consider as well as work up You should probably consider doing it on them as well so the first thing that I would did when I went through this book and I'm currently doing is Going through these cases and covering up the differential and the workup potential pretty much by like just zooming in And just looking at one end and ignoring this side and trying to see how many other Differentials and workups I come up with And anything that I struggle with I kind of put on a piece of paper that way I can look Throughout the week and before test date. So those are the the mini cases and they have one for almost every single topic So in addition to that they have these cases which are more representative of what the actual test will look like Which is this is probably will be on the door before I go into the patient's room and There'll be a one-liner explaining what they have and then they're vitals and anything that I need to do for them so Then Kind of similar to the mini cases These are their answers to the questions that you may ask them. So Basically what I do is I read the case The the one liner and I look at the vitals and I consider all the questions that I want to ask them and then I look at this and I try to see which questions I missed and Try to see how close I was On that and then I would ask myself what physical exams would you do and then look to see what physical exams? They were looking for me to do And then finally I would think about what I would tell the patient So usually you give the patient a spiel on what you think they have as well as what you think that you want them to change So if they're smoking you want to tell them about their smoking habits things of that sort So I'll practice this before reading this and then finally I'll practice what I would put down for the physical exam and The diagnoses as well as the workup So that's essentially how I am structuring my studying Online I'll link this down below in the video, but they have these nice like templates, which is basically The computer software that you would be using so you can practice your timing So instead of just doing it all in my head I can and I will type the error the history in the physical exam to see if I can do it all under 10 minutes And it should be doable So I'll link that down below, but this is kind of a structure of how I'm studying So hopefully that's helpful for any of you guys wondering how in the world you study for step two And I'll continue to give tips throughout the rest of this video, but this is a jump inside my computer now Let's jump back out Good morning guys. All right, so today is Wednesday yesterday night. I don't know if the clip actually recorded Yesterday night I did about 15 cases. There's about 44 in the book And then I went to sleep super tired and said today the plan is to get another 15 done this morning and then another 15 done Up into the day, so that'll kind of wrap up all the cases and then tomorrow I have to do is kind of review and marking down I'll show you on this paper later I'm just kind of marking down the cases that I want to come back to because there's something like pretty big That I missed on it and so but it's the morning You guys know I have a morning routine if you don't you should check out the morning routine video Which I really liked that I made and so I'll link it up here or link down below Put in one of these cards, but you can check it out But one of the things I do is I usually read something on my iPad for about 23 minutes I'm gonna do that before I do my cases for the day Also been starting to listen to podcasts in the morning, which is nice when I'm like brushing my teeth I'm getting my coffee ready But I'm gonna do some reading today's book is called the achievement Haven't haven't started so I wish you guys know how it is and then we will do our 15 cases Later this afternoon. I have to go TA. I'm an anatomy TA So I have to go grade the test of the students took yesterday And then I have to grade for another class. I've also tm for this afternoon. It's pretty busy I'm gonna work out in and then so 15 cases this morning TA grading stuff and then 15 cases evening and that's gonna be your day so Relatively bland, but we're gonna make it fun because I'm gonna take you guys with me So let's get through the reading and then we'll start the cases Alright guys, I'm still getting through my cases. I've got like four to five down have another ten left this morning I just want to give you guys a quick idea what I'm doing So I'm going through the cases and then I'm kind of writing down anything that I would likely forget on test day I've only been studying for like a day and a half really so It's a lot for the first time around there's just putting on one piece of paper Because idea is tomorrow. I don't want to do any actual studying I just want to look over this and then create like a master sheet of Everything that I should kind of just keep in mind going into test day So that includes, you know, like for example, I have a section for dementia So I wrote down everything that I would likely forget if a patient was complaining of being forgetful So there's some things that come to mind easily or are you think about Alzheimer's you think about? Like a vascular dementia, but then there's other things that I wrote down, you know Obviously like older people you think about depression so I wrote those down and then the plan is tomorrow morning before I head out to Houston, which is where my test site is I'm going to just kind of look over those. So I'm going to that I'm also as I'm going through the cases making a list of any of the cases I want to come back to really quickly Anyone that knows me really well knows that I am more of a fan of looking at the same thing twice versus looking at it At one time and hoping that I retained everything. So I'm going to do this case. It's pretty fast I'm kind of acting as if I was gonna be inside the room with the patient So I'm going through each of the questions The way the the step two CS book Presents it is that it presents in the table and each little Row is a question that you'd likely may ask. So I'm kind of going through it You know the first is complaining of abdominal pain. The first question is where you here abdominal pain Okay, well, how long has it been going on? That's usually the next question And I can see how many of those questions I ask in my head We'll also show up in the table and then I can look at the questions that I asked or I didn't ask that are also on The table gives me an idea of what to put down on the sheet and then tomorrow I just have to review the sheet and I won't have to come back to the book We're just like 500 pages. So 10 more cases to go. I'm gonna do them pretty quickly again Because tomorrow I'm gonna just come back to the case that I think I struggled with a little bit And that's pretty much it. There's not really much to the studying At least compared to like a step two CK or a step one for sure But it is something you still want to be prepared for it. So I'm gonna get back to the case and I'll see you guys in the next clip So one thing I forgot to mention in the previous clip is that when I'm approaching these cases on The first date book I'm acting as if I'm gonna go in and then I'm creating a diagnosis before I even look at anything else So I'm gonna show you an example, which is this patient comes in some male 26 year old and he comes in plenty of a cough Looking at his vitals. He doesn't really have a fever. All of his vitals are pretty normal So I'm trying to think of what could cause somebody to have a cough easily He could have like a viral, you know infection. He could have a bacterial infection. He could have heart failure He's 26. So probably not likely, but then you have to think of other things. You got HIV He could have curd Asthma those are all things that kind of come up to my mind because then when I'm gonna go in the room I'm going to write these things down on the side of my paper and make sure I ask questions relating to that That way I can make sure I put one of those types of this down if anything fits or if something doesn't but obviously not at it on but hopefully that was helpful Trying to make this as a natural as a real thing. So coming up with diagnoses coming up with questions before you even look at the rest of the case But yeah, that was my little tidbit and I'll see you guys the next one after doing that case Sure, not this guy has likely HIV likely reflux. I think and then infection the only thing I didn't mention was maybe tuberculosis So you can kind of start saying how once you get into that mode of thinking of what the diagnosis is because that's what you eventually want to figure out You would likely be able to get the answers before you've been reading anything about the patient So try that on your preparation and even just for your normal patient interactions. They'll help you out all the time All right, guys, so it is four o'clock right now. I managed to finish those 15 cases this morning Went to school had a great some tests for a class that I'm taking for I'm an anatomy tutor Got a workout in so I have my protein shake here. I'm ready to go I'll watch some YouTube videos and I'm gonna get those other 15 cases done But on that note, I want you guys to comment below Who is your favorite med school youtuber comment below give me some love I also want to see what you guys are following get some ideas myself And plus other people in the community get an idea of who else they should be following So give your favorite youtuber a comment below But I am going to watch those YouTube videos finish that shake and then we are gonna get back to those cases for the rest of the day Now I'll catch you guys in a second. All right, guys What is going on? So I don't think the video from yesterday evening got recorded, but I did manage to finish all my cases By like yesterday night, there's like 44 of them. So I managed to skim through them But currently today is Thursday. So the test is tomorrow and I am driving to Houston Which is where my testing site is I've been driving for three hours. That's how far it is from Dallas Got one more hour to go. So I'm used to making these drives, but I still am tired And so I'm gonna get to the hotel do a little bit of review And I'll show you guys if I remember kind of what my review consists of and then tonight If you guys do watch this you will see that I will do a live stream on the YouTube channel Which will kind of go over how I prepare for tests since I have one tomorrow And so, you know, if you didn't watch the live stream catch the link will be here here somewhere, you know You know the drill or check out the links in the description But I will kind of go over the last bit of review I do and then tomorrow we'll get test day And then I am ready because that is my last huge thing of medical school aside from me I'll have to apply to residency and all that but we'll get to that hurdle once we get there But just filled up some gas took a walk around the gas station because I was having some tired legs and We are going to make it to Houston with the next 45 minutes and then I will see you guys at the hotel room So take care. All right guys, what is going on? So I'm officially in the hotel As you guys can see already messed up the bed, but managed to get some groceries And now it's going to do my review what I realized is the ultimate fail on my part I totally forgot all my review papers back at my apartment in Dallas. So total fail, but that's okay when you are going to Improvised so essentially what I'm going to do is on the step to see a book that you guys can use I'll link that down below to see what it is You can the there's like these mini cases that they have Which cover maybe about 40 to 50 pages of the book the book is like 500 pages Maybe like 200 pages of real content. There's 50 pages Of mini cases, which is like one to two lines of a video So say like a 35 year old female comes in with a headache And she's using all her contraceptives and then you're opposed to kind of come up with maybe four things she can have So I'm going to go through all 50 of those pages. I've already done it. So Essentially what I'm doing is I'm going to go through each case really quickly And I'm going to ask myself like what the differential would be and then if I notice myself like kind of Not coming up with all the common differentials. So for example, if I'm doing chest pain, you know, I may not think of things like GERD. I may not think of things like that Or Somebody having trauma those are may not be questions I think that I'm going to put those on like a sticky note or a word document that way I'm going to say, you know chest pain make sure to ask about trauma And that way tomorrow morning, I'm just going to review all those So I know that when I'm going through my cases tomorrow and see patients I'll definitely ask about the heart attacks and what not, but I'll also ask about the questions that I like being missed So that's how I want to structure it. It's going to be really quick. So right now it is about to be six I'm going to do a live video call At seven. So I'm going to try to keep this down by 6 30. So 50 pages a really quick scan and just keeping A note of what things I struggle with and then that's if my review show up tomorrow Kill it or at least not get killed But I think that's going to be it. I'm going to see you guys likely tomorrow morning Unless there's a big updates today and then we will get ready for the exam for long wait. So I'll see you guys All right guys. Good morning. It is Friday morning Day of the test. I look tired. It's because I am but not because I didn't get enough sleep. I think I got too much I went to bed at like nine. It was about six. So nine hours for me I think this is what that comes out to is a lot. So I think I'm going to have a point where my body is like confused But I'll wake up. No worries. So I have a test about An hour is what I have to get there. So I'm going to do what I like to call a quick review, which is I'm just going to quickly flip through the pages on my review book and just say yep. Got it. Got it. Got it. It's just more of a Done for the purpose of confidence versus action And then I'm going to grab some type of caffeinated beverage Maybe coffee. I'm most likely to be seeing you guys on the other end of my test And by then hopefully I'm a little bit more awake. So I'll see you then wish you luck All right, guys, what is going on? If you were watching this, that means that I am done with my step two cs Uh, I am driving back to Austin, which is my hometown So while I'm kind of finishing up the rest of this drive, sorry about any shaking this I'm gonna kind of tell you how the test went and then give you some ideas on what to prepare for if you're taking this Yourself and then I'll make a different video in the future. I've kind of had prepared But these are like my immediate tips after taking these in So test overall, I think went well It's a tiring day, but actually goes by pretty fast It's much faster than your other multiple choice exams like step two and step one We're just sitting there and doing a lot of multiple choice questions Um, so I prefer this over those tests any day plus this pass fail. So that's always nice. Um In addition, you get a lot of breaks probably much more than you're used to so you get break There's 12 patients that you see uh, you see each of them for 15 minutes and you have 10 minutes to write their notes about 25 30 minutes for a full patient and you see three patients in a row consecutively and then you get a break See three more patients and then you get lunch and then you see three more patients You get another break and then three more patients you've done So take ups goes by pretty fast because you have these scheduled breaks in between Um regarding the actual patient encounters, obviously I'm not gonna tell you any of the actual cases But they're overall pretty self-explanatory. Some of them are pretty challenging and so They kind of tickle your, uh, brain a little bit in terms of trying to come up with a diagnosis But it's really good practice for you to kind of just go from start to finish and see if you can ask all the right questions And then come up with diagnoses and differentials and work ups so my tips for anyone that's going to take this test or You know is preparing for the exam is work on First like you have a different flow of plan that you should go through. So the first part of your plan should be Uh, make sure you can know how to ask all the right questions So when you first start your setting plan make sure you can know what questions to ask in the history What part make sure you didn't you remember to ask about like social surgical occupation You know drug use sexual history all that stuff, uh, allergies, and then make sure you have all that nailed down Then move on to questions, uh, or things that you would do for a particular physical exam So know what you would do if somebody came in For headache, what things you would do on a physical exam questions you would have asked Uh, do that for the diagnosis. So that's phase two and phase three is come up with the ability to say, okay patient comes in with a dementia, uh complained or Complaint like chest pain. What are the four things i'm thinking in my head? That that patient would have Because one thing that I love doing that kind of helped out is when I'm about to go in the room and I see for the first time Uh, if you're not familiar with how the test works when you're about to go in the room You look at the door, uh sheets, but which has info on the patient and why they're coming to see you So I made to say somebody's here for a headache. Um, and you'll see they're vitals So you have to be able to think about four different things at least maybe four to five But that patient could have and that way when you go in the room, you know, four to five diagnosis You may be considering before even seeing the patient, um So practice in phase three of coming up with the complaint and what a differential could be before you even, uh, go Like look into the history, uh, and then kind of ending off phase three once you think of You know the the four to five different differentials Think about what the workups would be to cover those bases So if I give you a patient, I say, you know a patient comes in with shortest of breath Start thinking like what's the three to five things I would consider in a patient that has shortest of breath And what would be that workup assuming? I don't know anything about them because then you can go in the room confidently ask all your questions that you've got on phase one and Do all the physical exams that you got on phase two then phase three You already know what the differentials that you have that you're working with and your note can be much easier Direct so Those are kind of my tips and how to do it other minor things that I'll include to kind of wrap up this video Because I just literally got home. So Is make sure you're kind of on top of your timing particularly with timing typing people kind of struggle If you're not an avid typer, you don't type a lot Um 10 minutes can be a lot to or a little to write everything you need So make sure you have your typing down. Um, but that's pretty much with this test. That's pass fail guys. So Do your due diligence make sure you kind of cover your bases in those phases So get the the questions you need to ask the diagnosis and phase two And then the differentials and the work up in phase three Uh and take a deep breath when you go if you feel like you'd screwed up with one patient That's fine. There's 11 more for you to be successful at But that's it for this video and for this like kind of uh short blog following my step two c s journey Hopefully you guys enjoyed it if you did give it a like Uh subscribe to the channel if you want more videos like this and more video tip videos on a weekly basis But I will see you wonderful people um in the next video And uh, let me know if you guys have any questions in the comment section But I'm gonna stop battling like I always do at the end of the video and I will see you guys in the next one Take care guys