Board Review

Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]

Overview

Wikidoc board review questions are intended to help medical students, residents, fellows and physicians in practice in their preparation for their exams:

• USMLE step 1
• USMLE step 2 clinical knowledge (CK)
• USMLE step 3
• In-training examination
• Board certification

You can either answer or add board review questions. The questions are all multiple choice questions and they are organized in quizzes that you design according to your preference. Explanations are provided for each question.

Answer Questions

Choose the type of exam that you want to take. By clicking on one of the links below, you will be transferred to another page where you design your own test, answer the questions and read the explanations.

Add Questions

You can helping other exam taker by adding questions.

Click here to add a question!

The aim of the questions is to teach rather than to test. The cognitive tasks that the questions should target can be one or more of the following:

• Making a diagnosis
• Ordering diagnostic tests
• Ordering treatment
• Identifying risk
• Interpreting data
• Recommending patient management
• Identifying clinical features
• Recognizing pathology

The Design of the Questions

The Stem of the Question

• The questions are preferred to be narrated as a clinical vignette that is not an actual case.
• The information as well as the illustrations should serve the testing point.
• Below are some of the information that can be found in a question. They should be orderly included as follows:
  • Age, Gender (e.g., a 70 year-old man)
  • Site of Care (e.g., comes to the emergency department)
  • Duration (e.g. that has started one week ago)
  • Significant Patient History
  • Significant Family History
  • Significant Diagnostic Studies or the Results of Diagnostic Studies
    • Try as much as possible to include images whether still or motion
  • Initial Treatment and Response
• The questions should not include negative phrasing , for example “except” or “not”, nor "true" or "false" answers".

Answers

• Answers should include five choices where one answer is correct and the other four answers are distractors.
• All distractors should be homogeneous as they should fall in the same category as the correct answer and should me similar in length.
• Long correct answers are discouraged.
• Illogical answers, absolute terms, word repeats ( for example: a word or phrase in the correct response is the same as in the stem) are discouraged.
• “None of the above”, “All of the above” or some combination of response must not be used.

Answer Explanation

• The questions should include detailed explanation that provides the following:

The reason why the correct answer is correct The reason why each of the distractors is incorrect

• These questions are intended to teach rather than to test, hence the use of graphics, references and guidelines is encouraged when applicable.

References

References should be included when possible linking to new articles, review articles or guidelines that serve the initial teaching goal of the questions.