Best Internal Medicine Review Book
Timothee Cazares
Most internal medicine physicians who are considering the best internal medicine board review courses want a course that aligns with their goals of efficiency. If time is your most valuable resource, then you need an internal medicine review course that helps you study efficiently AND is extremely relevant to the exam content.
Your board review course should have the option to keep reviewing the lectures on-demand after the course is over. The best internal medicine review courses will provide you options for watching live and re-watching the lectures after the course is over!
Think about how you'll focus best, and make sure the course you choose aligns with an experience that will optimize your focus. You want an internal medicine review course that's professionally produced, so that the audio and visual quality is top-notch.
We understand the importance of the question. Now that the focus has been on self-directed learning due to coronavirus (COVID-19), purchasing a Qbank for your certification exam, internal medicine ITE (IM-ITE), or shelf exam costs more than money. Depending on the quality of the Qbank and the outcome of your exam results, it will save or cost you time. And time is a limited resource.
Fortunately, most internal medicine Qbanks create questions around these building blocks, but that may not help you to make your selection. You need to dig deeper to determine which type of content works best for you by asking the following questions:
Keep an open mind during the evaluation. Your due diligence will pay off. Once you get into study mode, you want to eliminate the time, energy, and distraction of questioning your internal medicine Qbank decision.
Are time-saving features built into the platform? See if you can name your exams for better organization and retrieval. Check if you have the ability to search your answered questions. You can save precious time by being able to search your questions, answers, explanations, and images.
Does the application function quickly? A three-second improvement in performance might not seem like a big deal, but when you multiply that by thousands of questions answered and explanations reviewed, that can add up to one to two days of your life.
Test them out by sending a support ticket. Do you receive a response? Do they publish customer support feedback? You will find varying levels of support and can determine whether their support model suits your needs.
Internal medicine Qbanks can offer lots of data to help you identify your unknown unknowns, self-remediate, and predict your score. Check out their performance dashboards to see what tools you might use to streamline your preparation time.
How are you doing relative to your peers who are preparing for the same exam? Did the majority of examinees miss the same question? Or are you in the minority that missed this particular question? Many individuals find this data motivational. Others find it a distraction.
ACP Journal Club helps you stay current with the latest evidence-based clinical information relevant to internal medicine and its subspecialties. Reviewing over 120 leading medical journals, this monthly feature in Annals of Internal Medicine contains an editorial, easy to read abstracts, and a page of other notable articles.
In rating the effectiveness of their study methods, physicians rate internal medicine board review courses somewhat more favorably than independent study using textbooks (the most widely-used method), but somewhat less favorably than independent study using print or online question banks.
The best internal medicine board review course for you will depend on many personal factors ranging from cost to your preferred way of learning. To help you determine which factors are most important to you, we interviewed a number of our survey participants to find out their reasons for enrolling in internal medicine board review courses and the criteria they used for selecting specific course offerings.
In choosing specific internal medicine board review courses, most physicians appear to strongly consider producer reputation, time, and cost. For example, in studying for his spring 2014 ABIM recertification exam, general internist Dr. Reynaldo Alonso of the Bronx, NY knew his learning preference would be for a live course:
I would think the internal medicine board exam might be more daunting for those who have specialized in their careers but still wish to maintain their internal medicine certifications. As a general internist, I see many different things every day in practice, so this course was all I really needed to feel confident and to pass my exam.
For my internal medicine boards, I chose a live course, but for pediatrics, I selected a DVD course. I chose the live course because it was relatively nearby, and I had an opportunity to stay with friends. I was also able to take off an entire week to devote to the course. My residency program provided educational funding, and the course was created by a reputable organization. Also, there was no DVD option for the particular course I had chosen, while other DVD courses were available to me through my residency library.
The real benefit with online courses is that you can log in anytime, so they are a good fit when you cannot put together the blocks of time needed for live courses. When my children were small, I will admit I preferred the longer-distance courses, because being away from the daily demands of family life made it much easier to focus on review. When you attend courses locally, it can be more difficult to separate from your daily concerns and to focus only on the course material.
Deciding when to schedule an internal medicine review course can be somewhat tricky. On the one hand, physicians may be inclined to enroll in courses very close to their exam dates in order to maximize memory retention of the material covered. Dr. Hamilton advises a different tactic:
You want to take your course far enough ahead of time for it to be useful in directing supplemental study. Internal medicine board review courses will often cover newer content that you might need to know. They are very good at bringing physicians up-to-date in areas where they may not have concentrated their own consumption of medical research, journals, and so forth. Board review courses are a great way to gain insights into the areas where you need to study more and review relevant research and literature prior to taking your exam. You want to make sure that you leave yourself sufficient time to do that follow-up study.
Both of the courses I took were psychologically reassuring. While the universe of what there is to know in medicine is almost infinite, it was a relief to know it is possible to go through [what the boards view as] the most important points of medicine in one week! That way I could focus more on the parts of the review course in which I had weaknesses. This helped my confidence more than anything else. When I actually took the boards, I based my answers for 50% of the questions on practical experience; another 30% of my answers were based on experience with practice questions. The number of extra questions I could answer because of the board review courses was probably between 5 and 20%, but that small margin was very comforting in terms of helping me to prioritize my time.
An interesting perspective on internal medicine board review courses and preparation for board certification in general came from Dr. John Wolfe Blotzer, who has worn many hats throughout his medical career, including chief resident, fellow, educator, academic dean, residency program director, clinical practitioner, and even a board-review course lecturer.
At the time of the survey, Dr. Blotzer had recently retired, but still held multiple board certifications (internal medicine, rheumatology, and geriatrics). He had lifelong certification in internal medicine, but still chose to undergo regular assessments of his medical knowledge and to recertify at recommended (albeit not required) intervals throughout his career.
I believe all physicians have an ethical duty to stay up-to-date with their medical knowledge and have never believed that I should be held to a different standard than others in the field. In the early 2000s, I sat for three board exams within a short time frame. It was exhausting, but I truly believe in the importance of keeping up-to-date.
That approach must have worked as Dr. Blotzer passed each certification or recertification exam both with high scores and without other specific preparation or board review courses. What is more, he felt the examinations had become easier over time as a result of making studying and learning a routine part of his practice.
Asked how he might advise others who are preparing for medical board certification and considering courses, Dr. Blotzer said that, above all else, he would recommend introspection about individual learning styles, understanding varying practice settings (for example, academic versus purely clinical), and maintaining habits for staying up-to-date with medical knowledge.
Passing the exam is job #1, sure, but a lot more goes into the making the "best IM board review" purchase decision. What's the "best internal medicine qbank" can entail several value points, expectations, and personal preferences that go beyond hammering through ABIM exam review questions and answers.
Since you're on a high-stakes mission, it's likely that any of the reputable online internal board review question bank courses out there can help you yield a passing score - if you use it.
Most offer a money-back, pass-guarantee because the overwhelming majority of prepared test-takers pass. The one's who don't pass usually didn't even look at their resources or did so too late. Exam prep is akin to a treatment course. Take the whole course and self-assess your knowledge consistently. A one pill, one try, wonder it is not.
c80f0f1006