Countdown to step 2 cs: 1 days left:

Did some practice cases in the morning. Then went shopping for a shirt and white coat. I found found easily. But guess what when I got home and opened the wrapping for the white coat it was a full length attendings coat and not the short medical school version. My goodness. I tried it on in the store all the lady had to do was retrieve the same coat. I told her I was a medical student. Aaaa. well.... thats water under a bridge now. It will be handled, all that is left is to focus on my exam tomorrow. Later that evening i practiced my cases.

Countdown to step 2 cs: 2 days left

I woke up, practiced my full physical examination and then focused on my neurological examination. Around 4 pm I drove off to showdown site, and checked into the sheraton a block away from the test center.
 At this point I have already gone through all the cases in first aid, and have reviewed the mini cases multiple times. In the evening, i reviewed a full length case and noticed i had tunnel vision because i knew what was coming and what answers were expected in the case. The solution for this is to  treat every case like new, like its the first time you are seeing it, ask open ended questions, and figure out solution from scratch.

Finally, I am meeting my time deadline of 15 minutes per case. For this to happen I changed my approach to being more focused both in the amount of questions and in the physical exam. Now I do not ask every question under the topic instead i get chief complaint, the associated problems and get descriptions of all problems (quality, duration, location etc.)

Later while lounging in my nice hotel room, I noticed I left my white coat and shirts at home in my haste. Not to worry, there's macy's close by. Tomorrow I will do some shopping. This is why you always give yourself some time leeway. Good thing I arrived a two days prior.

Tomorrow is my last free day before D day. Will iron out a few details and just practice to make sure I have the overall routine to approaching the patient down.

Vine: That moment you see you are in the same class as someone you know.

youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxG035tQJ8c

Count down to Step 2 cs: 3 days left

In the afternoon, I completed all the other cases with my buddy. After this we went over performing a full physical exam to make sure I was doing my physical exams correctly. In the evening, after practicing , I packed my bags and headed to my girlfriends house. I will go through the physical exam a few more times and also review some of the cases i found difficult. Then around 2 pm tomorrow, Sunday, I will head of to philly.

I have a splitting headache. Most likely a tension headache, quite possibly caused by the lurking exam.

Count down to Step 2 cs: 4 days left

I practiced 5 cases with a medical school buddy. He pointed out a few things i could tweak here and there. The pressure of the exam being so close is beginning to hit me.

edit: this post is from two days ago. 

Countdown to step 2cs: 5 days

I made a lot of progress. I now have only nine cases to go through, meaning I will have seen all the cases at least once ahead of the planned time, saturday. This leaves saturday to do some revision.

Today, I went through 13 cases: 9 back to back in the afternoon, and 4 back to back in the evening. This time i spent ten minutes after every case writing my notes. My head felt really stuffed and heavy after about the 6th case but i pushed on.

Issues:
1) still struggling with time. My best time was 10 -11 min but that was a pediatric case that involved no physical exam. My best time with adult cases was 15 min. My slowest time was 22 min.
2) Enuresis, rape,  mva, and pregnancy cases

Solution:
1) time: stick as closely to pneumonic as possible and then after ask extra questions.
2) make a list of cases that I need to focus including the ddx, diag wkup, and questions and review them daily





















Side note: its thanks to my sister and girlfriend that I have progressed so quickly!