It’s over || DNPR & BSFCR || SGU Term 5

Written By Rainee

Life

Term 5, Basic Sciences at SGU, my preclinical years, it’s all done! No take-backs! I can’t believe two years flew right past me. I can feel the gust of humid air hit me like a brick wall when I stepped onto the airport tarmac in Grenada. I can still feel the panic of missing my first class of medical school and then almost being late to my second class.

It’s been anything but what I predicted and that’s before counting in the pandemic. I’m grateful to everyone who helped me get this far. Being in medical school can feel lonely, but it does take a tribe to get you through it.

It’s been about a week since I finished my last exam. I’ve been enjoying all the human things I’ve put on hold for the last two weeks cramming for finals. I picked up “Life is Strange” because I’m ready for some more heartbreak but I bought GTA 5 because, well chaos. It’s been like a weight off my shoulders passing basic sciences!

Human moments: Thanksgiving edition

SGU waits for no one! We had our module exam the day after Thanksgiving and OCEX/OPSE started on Saturday. I recently read a post by a medical student on reddit who decided to go to an engagement party instead of study. Sometimes doing something over studying seems frivolous and there’s always that “eat, sleep, study” culture in school. But OP commented how they would probably never remember a day of studying, but they will always remember being a part of their loved one’s lives that day.

Since I passed Term 5, I will say that celebrating Thanksgiving despite having a test was a measured decision to enjoy my life. If I didn’t pass, well maybe I’d be writing that it was a mistake. For me, it’s incredibly important to live my life. Medicine asks so much already, I decided not to give it everything that makes me me.

If you have access to a costco, please try their brie & fig bake, please!!

SGU Term 5 DNPR

The Dermatology, Neurology, Psychiatry, and Rheumatology (DNPR) module, I took a breath and it was over. It was a very quick 3 weeks jam-packed with 4 topics and 3 exams. We also had our Case Presentation and about 2000 or really 1000 attempts at USMLE-Rx questions due so more than enough to keep me busy.

DNPR Schedule

I stuck with my usual method for my last module. I like to set the tone of the day by exercising in the mornings. It feels like no matter how hard the day hits, I at least accomplished something and took care of myself. I used to wake up and go straight to working out without looking at my phone. It seemed to help my anxiety, but near the end of the term I ended up doing Anki cards while cycling or in between sets.

Then I would do my post-reads/practice questions and ended my day with anki. Until that last week, I had stopped studying at 9 PM and took Sundays off. For me, I really needed that. There’s this really tight anxious feeling in my chest when I push overboard and then I’m not productive at all. Taking time off to be a human really helped me this term. I even kept my high pass!

Okay, I think I misread someone’s advice but you definitely see Neuro again after MNI. This time it was only for a week! But same amount of stuff to know plus a little extra.

Let me tell you, I was in pure bliss after hitting my last attendance mark. Amazing to have a whole day to work with resources and practice questions.

Post-reads

In this last module, I changed my post-reads slightly. I still didn’t look at the class slides. I tried. I really did. I got in my head hearing from all the people who lived on slides and I tried to post-read. For some reason, the organization of the lectures just did not jibe with me. So I ended going back to my old ways.

I used Grace’s/Firehouse Prep’s schedule as a template. Every week would be dedicated to one topic. The first part of the week I’d watch all the normal physiology videos from Boards & Beyonds, then use Pathoma to cover all the pathology parts. I’d supplement with Sketchy Pharm and Path when I had time. This tool was helpful to speed videos past 2x. I watched videos for about 2-3 hours per day while annotating FA or the sketchy PDFs. I’d transfer all the related Anki. After, I would do focused 20-40 USLME-Rx questions. Later on in the term, I added a 20-40 Uworld question block

Uworld

There’s so much talk about Uworld that I think it gets blown out of proportion. I would say it is the most challenging, but balanced question bank. For an average student like me, I wouldl’t be going in there if I wanted to see green tick marks and validation. However, I can’t say how much I appreciate this question bank’s explanations (chef’s kiss!).

I started doing about half-half with USMLE-rx questions, but the proportion of time I spent here increased as the term went on. I like that it pushes me to think critically and not rely on buzzwords because that’s a muscle I unintentionally gravitate to after SGU exams. It also has some information specific to itself so that can be a drawback if you’re only focusing on doing well in SGU exams.

My advice, if you’re someone who takes multiple passes of concepts and plans on doing two passes - I’d start around halfway through Term 5. However, the only way you’ll know how you want to approach Uworld is if you try it out. It’s okay if you use it more sometimes and less other times.

Case Presentation

I took an hour to make my case presentation PowerPoint which is only <1% of my grade. It was on one of the fake patient reports I did for my PCA in ihuman. I believe everyone did well as long as they tried, so I wouldn’t sweat it too much because there are bigger fish to fry near the end of Term 5. We were all assigned to a random group of people in Term 5 with a facilitator. The facilitator let us decide our presentation order. They gave us a set amount of time. Sometimes if there was extra time, the facilitator would ask a question to the presenter, sometimes not. They did ask a question to someone in my group and the presenter didn’t know the answer. However, it wasn’t a problem - we all just moved on.

DNPR Final

Leading up to the exam, my study plan had me finish my content review the week before the exam. I had allotted about 3-4 free days which was so helpful to drill questions and remind myself of the first topics we did in the module. To be honest, this exam was challenging of course but not CPRH challenging. I think it was the kind of exam expected from SGU. The worst part about it was waiting for results until a few days after the BSFCR so you didn’t even know if you passed Term 5.

BSFCR

Is that the right acronym? I’ll never get the name right.

Paraphrased quotes from the class group chat on the day of the exam: “This is the worst day of my life.” “What the fuck.”

At the beginning of the year, when I saw I had a whole week to review for the BSFCR, I let out a sigh of relief. Now after taking it, there is no way one could review 2 years’ worth of topics in one week.

From my understanding, previously the BFSCR was an NBME (not made by the school) and the module exams were more cumulative. However, in our term, the module exams were exactly that and the BSFCR was made by SGU.

Leading up to the exam, the primary guidance was a list given on the first day of class of the subjects and a range of percentages that the test might have similar to the one provided by First Aid or this osmosis picture. Several classmates reached out and the admin’s advice was the use old SGU practice questions, IMCQs, and outside resources like USMLE-Rx and Uworld. So do everything.

My Plan

Coming right off the DNPR exam, I felt like I had one foot out the door. Like it was the 2nd week of winter break. Saturday, I did a half-day because I had Friendsgiving planned and a tutoring session in the morning. On Sunday, I had my OCEX, and the other half of the day I finished Cardio.

Then for the rest of the week, we had tutoring planned every day at night. I reviewed 2-3 systems at the beginning of the day.

For every subject, I did a mix of IMCQ’s, USMLE-Rx questions, and Uworld questions. I reviewed the high-yield (or so I thought) videos from Sketchy as the last priority. I honestly just tried to cover all my bases because I had no idea about the personality of this exam.

How it went

No this is awful. It is so specific to SGU. I’ve taken NBME’s. I’ve worked to get a passing score there. This is not that. However, this was probably the best exam in my history at SGU. I feel like that really doesn’t say much to be honest. I don’t think it was indicative of anything because the curve was thick and it didn’t really correspond to my NBME scores.

If this exam is still I thing, I suppose doing a mix of things and covering all your bases would be helpful? I wouldn’t let your guard down and think it was like BSCE from Term 2. I took the USMLE-rx self-assessment #1 after the BSCE and I think it might actually be helpful to do before the exam. It had some similarities to the feel of the BSFCR final.

Outside resources for DNPR & BSFCR

Okay, that’s a wrap on Term 5! It was painful, it was challenging, but not impossible. Rooting for you all!

Warmly, Rainee

I’m going to celebrate being done with the BS of BS, but next time we talk I guess we’ll be chatting about dedicated!

Rainee
Previous

Advice for Term 5 & Registering for Step 1 || SGU
Next

28 Days of B.S. || GOER || SGU Term 5