Medical MCQs and the USMLE

I received a question on one of my earlier blog posts from a Medical Student in the UK on whether the USMLE questions are useful.

What if I told you the background to the many Medical MCQs out there.

There are question banks. This is not a secret. To construct your own MCQ questions means a lot of fine tuning and getting it wrong - it is easier to ensure that the questions are validated and in general, MCQ banks are. All the following information is deduced from Google.

There is a very large question bank in Hong Kong that supply many medical schools around the globe. It seems to have great references to Toronto and the LMCC MCQ exams. Of course, the Canadian exams derive their questions from the USMLEs (Step 2 - the clinical Step).

Why USMLEs? I believe this is the most validated Medical Examination in the world with ALL medical students sitting the same exam. Personally, I think this should be where all medical exams should be and how I think the UK exams should aim to be. You might have heard questions being cancelled as too many people get it wrong - these are usually locally produced questions going through the phase of validation. These will be fewer than the standard bank questions, in general.

So, the answer is YES, doing USMLE Step 2 questions will in general help your skills in the following UK exams, Undergraduate MCQ, AMK, MRCGP AKT, DRCOG, DCH, and many others.

A good review book is one that has good explanations about why the other answers are incorrect... rather than just A to E as a correct answer. In my day, I have done thousands and thousands of medical MCQs and do not find them a challenge. Personally, it is pattern recognition - with some variation - like practising clinical medicine.

I have added a bit more to this post as it seems to be the most popular post.

MCQ books are not all the same. What you want is a book that will talk you through the answers as once you understand why the answers to the question are such, you will find out 2 things

1. How the questions are set - an essential part of MCQ technique

2. How to answer a similar question put in a different way to indicate a different answer

I suggest if you are in the UK - this book has a good section on telling you why the answers are the right ones



In the US this is the equivalent book with a link to Amazon there: