WELCOME!
Thank you for your willingness to review MedStudy Student Core Questions and Answers. We appreciate your commitment to helping us provide high quality Q&A's that will help medical students pass the USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 examinations and improve their clinical knowledge. As you know, Student Core is designed to be a product for first- through fourth-year medical students. The goal of Student Core sections and Q&A's is to simplify complex material, give encouragement, help students focus on the most important aspects of what they are learning, and test clinical knowledge to help them in their clinical rotations.
As a reviewer and expert in your field, we are counting on you to:
As a reviewer and expert in your field, we are counting on you to:
- Review and rewrite the content of the Q&A’s to ensure the information is correct and up-to-date and the concept is relevant and based on guidelines and current standards of care.
- Check if the concepts are appropriate for a student preparing for the USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 examinations:
- Step 1, per the USMLE website, “assesses the examinee’s understanding and ability to apply important concepts of the sciences basic to the practice of medicine, with special emphasis on principles and mechanisms underlying health, disease, and modes of therapy.”
- Step 2 (Clinical Knowledge) “assesses the examinee’s ability to apply medical knowledge, skills, and understanding of clinical science essential for the provision of patient care under supervision, with an emphasis on health promotion and disease prevention.”
- Review the organization of the Q&A’s to ensure they are effective teaching tools.
TOOLS
To make the Q&A review as easy as possible, we are providing the following tools to you:
- Detailed Student Core Q&A Writer Specifications for both Step 1 and Step 2
- Examples of Step 1 and Step 2 Student Core Q&A’s
- Working copy of the Student Core section that pairs with the Q&A’s
- A checklist to guide you through the review process
- Laboratory values reference
- A short YouTube video tutorial on how to review Q&A’s
CHECKLIST
- Before beginning, be sure to review the Writer Specifications!
- Please note that this Q&A review is the first step in the editing process, therefore, these Q&A's have not yet been copyedited or edited. Don't feel the need to correct basic spelling and grammar as these will be addressed later by copyediting.
- Concept
- True, and experts in the field plainly agree upon it.
- Important to direct patient care or public health.
- Information in the stem, question, answer choices, explanation, and testing point has to be accurate, relevant, and up to date according to recent guidelines and standards of care. Note: Both Step 1 and Step 2 Q&A’s can also be founded on nonevidence-based guidelines, consensus statements, and well-established standards of care.
- Step 1:
- Topic areas: anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, biochemistry, microbiology, or pathophysiology of a condition
- Likely to be tested on the Step 1 exam.
- Step 2:
- Topic areas: All of the topics are high yield. Remember that, with all topics, the focus is more on diagnoses of conditions and recommending the next step in treatment or on the medication to treat a condition.
- Likely to be tested on the Step 2 exam.
- Structure
- Stem
- Clinical scenario is clear, complete, realistic, and free of ambiguity
- Includes enough clinical information to make the distractors possible answers.
- Lab results need lab values included (e.g., mEq/L, mg/dL). Remind the writer that all lab values must be consistent with the Student Core Laboratory Values reference.
- Question
- Requires a clearly identified clinical task
- The scope of the question is appropriate for the student’s level of study (e.g., A Step 2 concept should not be tested in a Step 1 Q&A.)
- The stem must be necessary in order to answer the question.
- Is positively phrased (no use of “not correct,” “except,” “contraindication,” etc.)
- Note: Although it seems ambiguous, the word “likely” (e.g., “What is the most likely diagnosis?”) is acceptable terminology for Student Core Q&A’s.
- Correct Answer
- 1 correct answer
- Provides a single-best answer
- Is scientifically sound
- Distractors (wrong answer choices)
- 4 distractors
- Plainly inferior to the correct answer choice
- No use of “all of the above,” “none of the above,” “both __ and __ are correct.”
- Explanation (usually 5–6 parts)
- Part 1: Explains why the correct answer is right
- Parts 2–5: Explain why each distractor is not correct and provide an example/scenario of when it is.
- Any key material the writer includes in the Explanation of the correct answer that the student needs to arrive at the correct answer must also be in the corresponding Student Core section.
- If the Reviewer cannot find the key material of the Q&A in the corresponding Student Core section, then the Reviewer needs to instruct the writer to revise or rewrite the Explanation of the correct answer. Instruct the writer to also revise the Testing Point as necessary.
- The terminology used in the explanation of the correct answer and the distractors must match the terminology used in the multiple-choice options themselves. For example, if a multiple-choice option is “hypertension,” then the explanation should use the term “hypertension.”
- Instruct the writer to put the explanation of each distractor on its own line.
- Instruct the writer to delete material that does not immediately help explain or support the correct answer.
- Instruct the writer to delete material that is redundant.
- Testing Point
- Identifies the important concept that is being presented
- Brief, clear, direct, and begins with an active verb (e.g., “Know,” “Understand,” “Perform,” “Diagnose,” “Manage,” “Recognize,” “Recall”)
- It should not be a restatement of the explanation, but 1 or 2 sentences that reflect the concept chosen for the Q&A.
