 Alright guys, in today's episode we are going to talk about how to prep for step 3, but doing it during your residency. Let's get into it. Hey guys, welcome to the MD Journey, a channel completely dedicated to helping you succeed on your medical journey and doing it with less stress. My name is Lakshman, internal medicine physician and resident in training, and here on this channel we make videos all about helping you on your pre-med, your medical school, and yes, your residency journey. So if you guys are new here to the channel, definitely consider hitting that like and subscribe button. In today's video we are talking about step 3 and how to prepare during a PISU residency schedule. Now this is going to be a new addition and video to our step 3 series, so if you guys want to check out the old ones, go ahead and check out the playlist down below. We talk about resources and planning as well as my own prep and reaction. But in this video I really want to just kind of give you a framework on how to approach studying for step 3. So the first thing is really just understanding test day is two days. Most people will have a few days to a week between their two days of their exam. One for a mental break, and two to also make sure that they can study for the second part of their exam, which also includes the clinical cases, which is unique to step 3. So once you understand that the two days usually will have some gap in between, you want to make sure that one, you're taking the test itself during a lighter rotation. I personally took it over Thanksgiving weekend, so I took it on a Saturday and took my second part of my exam on a Monday, so I had that Sunday and the rest of Saturday evening off. You want to also make sure that not only are you taking the test on a lighter rotation, but ideally you're studying for the test on a lighter rotation. This is one mistake I personally made where I went ahead and scheduled my test while I was finishing up an ICU rotation, so my ability to study effectively had gone down and up depending on how busy it was. And so that really is going to have a role in how well and effective your studying is. And so if you can help it, maybe look at a time throughout your calendar where potentially you're not on call, or maybe you can have your weekends off, or you just have a good amount of predictable days off. So on the days that you're busy, well, maybe you lose a studying day there, but on the days of your off, you can potentially make up for it and potentially even do more. And as a bonus tip, try to get your step three out of the way as quickly as possible. Definitely doing clinical rotations in your intern year, whatever specialty you're in will help you out, but you also are likely to forget the things that aren't unrelated to the field that you're going into. So if you're a medicine physician like me and you're probably going to figure it, all the OB-GYNology learned during medical school so it's probably more advantageous that you take it quickly into your intern year and do the studying while you're on a lighter rotation. But once we get that out of the way, next we're going to talk about a study approach. Now the first thing you really want to keep in mind is you want to limit the kind of resources to really only doing questions. You don't have time to read and watch videos that you did back in medical school. You probably didn't have time to do it then. Well, you definitely don't have time to do it now. So really just limit your resources to questions. And I really only recommend using your world plus the cases that comes with it. And it just helps you simplify that this is all I really need. There's not much like ancillary or support resources that you have to add on to do well on step three. And in terms of how long you really need to study, it just really depends on how quickly you can get through the questions, the cases, as well as doing a little bit of time at the very end for review and weaknesses. And so as the making of this video, you will currently has about 1,600 practice questions for all of their multiple choice sections. This is an include all the cases that they have on top of it, as well as other resources and exams. So it's definitely a lot, but I recommend that you try to get through as much if not all of it is possible. So a nice way to break this down to be able to give you a very manageable study schedule is find that time of the year, the ideally you'd like to take step three and then basically account for how many days a week you would study. So let's say you want to take the test in March and you have a lighter rotation in the end of March as well as February. So ideally that gives you the opportunity to potentially study five days a week for a busier rotation, maybe three to four days. As soon as you can do that, then you can divide the 1,600 by the amount of days or weeks in between and get an idea of how many questions you'll have to do per day. Obviously, this is an average and this is a problem that I personally ran into where you'll see that, oh, I only have to do 40 questions a day, but there's going to be some days where you don't study because it was a longer day than you expected or you had no motivation to do so. But just keep in mind that if you do have days off on the weekends or a day off after a call day, ideally you can do two blocks or more questions on those days to make sure you don't get behind. But to avoid falling into a trap where many residents do or you only give yourself about a month and then it's a during a busy rotation. Sometimes you'll end up having to be in a situation where you have to do technically about 80 to 120 questions a day just to get through all of you will practice questions. And so usually those residents will tend to not finish all of the valuable practice questions that you paid for as well as potentially could help you do even better on the exam. And so to help counteract that problem, make sure you just look at your calendar first before scheduling the exam. That way you can give yourself enough time to start doing the year old questions without it becoming overwhelming. And as you're doing the questions, I really recommend just starting from random. There's no really benefit like you did for first aid or step one where you have cardiovascular on day one, GI on day two, it's really probably more advantageous for you to have all of the questions of opi-gyne and urology and pediatrics mixed so that way you can see the topics that you're strong and weak at. And as you're missing questions or as you're getting questions correctly but for the wrong reasons, make sure you're marking them because then throughout the last few weeks you can go back to those questions or those question banks and make sure that you've reviewed that topic so you don't miss it on actually on test day. Now one of the things that I was personally doing to keep track of all of my missed and kind of marked questions is I was using a method that I like to call the Excel method, which I have talked about on the channel before, and if you guys are more interested in how I use it for step three, I'll link down below kind of the modules for our Medellin Academy. Basically I was taking all the content that I was missing on year old or marking and making sure that I nicely kind of put it into an Excel sheet so that I could look at it during my review week, going into the exam as well as like the night before exam and feel comfortable that my weaknesses are no longer week and it should be good for test day. Now as you're going through your setting, really all I recommend doing is just doing the questions and getting through as many as possible and making sure you're not getting very far behind. But during the last few weeks, about three to four weeks away from your exam, I recommend definitely starting to do the cases, which will show up on the second day of your test. Now you probably haven't done anything like these cases before because it's just a completely different interface. I do recommend, you know, during the start of your prep, even before these last three to four weeks of just doing the first four to five cases in your world so you can see what these cases will look like. Whether you choose to do these cases towards the end of your prep or kind of intermix is up to you. I found it to be a little bit hard doing the intermix because I found my focus was just kind of alternating, but I do recommend potentially just doing the first four to five cases so you can see an idea of what they look like, what the cases are like, you know, what type of things you have to consider and then just keep that in the back of your mind during the last three to four weeks of doing a few cases a day. Now they aren't very long cases and honestly you learn more by just doing the cases as quickly as possible and then reading the explanations on what type of things you should have done. They probably didn't and things that you did they probably didn't need to and using that whether it's through an Excel method like I was using or something else to indicate. Okay, on these problems, these are the labs I need to order. These are the problems I need to consider and just having come some type of kind of collection system that way when you're reviewing for test day, well, okay, I have a patient for DK on my cases. These are the things I'm going to do. So doing the cases a little bit early on to get familiar with that format and then just going through them as quickly as possible so you can see as many as possible is really anything to show up on test day. I include pediatrics, OB-GYN, general like hospital medicine as well as general outpatient medicine. So doing as many of the interactive cases where you're actually the one who is putting in the orders as well as the practice cases where they just kind of walk you through the approaches but you don't actually do anything. I recommend doing as many of those as possible. Now once you're getting about a week or two before your exam day a few things that I recommend doing about the last week of your exam prep I would recommend definitely doing at least one self-assessment just make sure that you're doing okay on your practice questions especially if you're going through the practice questions on UALT as quickly as you may be you may not get the highest percentage correct and so that may kind of give you a little bit of anxiety but I do recommend putting yourself in a test environment and doing like four question banks back to back using UALT. Now one thing to keep in mind is that the self-assessment is a little bit more strict and harder in terms of grading probably not a real thing but that's because the self-assessment doesn't include any practice cases. So just keep that in mind don't really pay attention to the self to the score but more about your stamina and your ability to work through those problems that may be about similar difficulty than the actual thing. And another thing I do recommend doing within the last two weeks of your exam is to also start the biostat section of the exam prep. Now it may seem like a lot of stuff is going on you know residency doing the cases as well as the practice questions and so really what I would do is as you're going into your last week of your exam kind of back away from the cases ideally you do a little bit more of them towards the last three to four weeks and so on the last week you can back away from how frequently you're doing them so you can do more of the biostats questions because really there's about like four to five questions per section and maybe sometimes even two or three so it's not a lot of questions itself but they do quiz you on the ability to understand some nuances so a lot of things you may be asked are things like sensitivity, specificity, things that we all hate. Other things like positive predictive value and likelihood ratios things that sound pretty familiar make it confusing and may get you a little anxious on test day you want to make sure you do those practice questions first on you worlds that way when it comes to test day you'll probably end up getting those right and the first day of your step one prep is definitely going to have a lot of biostats so you definitely will do more good for you by using that last week to go through that biostats questions in addition to going through your biostats questions have some systems so when you're done with your you will questions you can then review the weaknesses one thing that I intended on doing was doing all of my missed questions again but it simply didn't have enough time so I had a system where I was able to review my weak points through the excel method in this case which again you guys can check out down below but you can create any system you want that basically says this is how I'm going to go back to the topics that I missed I would do that definitely during the last week or two so again through the last week or two before the exam definitely do one self assessment try to go through the biostats questions ideally you've done of enough the cases by now if not you can quickly get through them so you can back away so you can practice your weak points and then when you actually do have your exam you know I would say during your first day where you have no cases during those first few days before that exam I would probably not do any more cases I would just focus on the practice questions and the weak points and then maybe during your kind of gap in between test number one and test number two is where I would do the cases so if you have a week in between two of the exams that's awesome just do the clinical cases now if you only have a day like I did then obviously you're going to have to do some cases during that last week but keep in mind you know if you do want to have a good bit of a break in between both of them then ideally try to split in day one and day two by a week but if you just want to get the test over with like I did then you're just going to have to be able to get enough of the cases done during your initial prep and so during that last week you're not overwhelmed by doing cases and practice questions so I know that was a lot so a little bit of an overview you know obviously work a little bit backwards look at your calendar find a lighter rotation for both your test day as well as the prep you know one to two months is more than enough to being a very relaxing kind of prep one month it may get a little stressful especially the last few weeks but that's totally up to you work backwards on how many weeks or how many days in a week you want to commit to for you world and that's going to be how many questions you plan on doing whether you miss a day make sure on the days off you do a little bit more to kind of catch up have some type of review system whether it's the excel method or something else to keep track of the things you miss and then during the last few weeks whether it's the last three to four weeks start doing some of the practice cases and try to get through as many of them as early as possible into those last three to four weeks so that way that last week you just do your self-assessment the biostat section and then ideally just the last few cases and reminders on your weak points so then you're just ready for test day but that guys is how I personally approach sub three is personally how I recommend you doing it without getting too overwhelming if you guys do want the full access to the step three rapid mastery guide as well as all the models and courses included in the meta lead academy that'll be linked down below and you get a full access for an entire week just for a dollar with that being said guys thank you so much for watching this video hopefully it's been a little helpful you do have more questions drop it down below in the comment section also hit that like and subscribe button obviously it supports the channel and two just tells me that you guys enjoy this content and you want more just like it thank you guys so much for watching this video hopefully you also enjoy the other step three videos that will be linked down below in the playlist thank you for being a part of my journey hopefully I've been a little hope to you on yours and I'll see you guys in the next one peace