Self-testing is one of the best ways to get confident for an upcoming board exam. Self-testing (AKA answering Board-Style Questions) is a great way to make your own ABIM self-assessments while practicing your recall of Internal Medicine topics. Board-Style Q&As are the ideal presentation of facts, concepts, and processes during all stages of studying—assessing your knowledge of a topic, previewing the material, studying it, and of processing the material into long-term memory.
We're always working on ways to make our Internal Medicine Board-Style Q&As better with features you can use to discover and eliminate your knowledge gaps! Here's a breakdown of the features you can use while going through an Internal Medicine Board-Style Q&A from start to finish in "Study Mode."
Try to “Experience” Each Question
After creating a session in your myMedStudy account, carefully read through the question and answer options. The question is telling a story, and it helps with your memory encoding if you put yourself in the story and "experience" the scenario. You can emotionalize the event—you are the doctor and the patient is your patient—for stronger encoding. Try it with this one!
Question from the Internal Medicine Board-Style Q&As
“Strikethrough” Answers as You Work through Your Process of Elimination
Once you've read through the question and you're starting to think about what the right answer might be, choose which answer options might be distractors from the answer and start eliminating them by striking through them. To do this in the Internal Medicine Board-Style Q&As, hover over the “abc” to the right of each answer, and click there to cross that answer off.
So, for this question, you might identify these as the distractors and cross them off:
Use the strikethrough feature to eliminate distractors
Think About How Confident You Are in Your Answer
Check out this feature: Confidence Levels in Q&As
After you've eliminated the answer(s) you think are distractors, you can use the Confidence Rater in the Internal Medicine Board-Style Q&As. The Confidence Rater feature allows you to record how well you know (or how confident you are in) the material in the question.
Choose from "I Don't Know It," "I'm Unsure," or "I Know It!" You'll then see if you got the answer correct along with the emoji indicating your confidence level.
Use the Confidence Rater feature in the Internal Medicine Board-Style Q&As
See How Your Answer Compares to How Other Internists Answered It
You can also visualize how your answer compares to others who've answered the same question with Peer Response. You'll see a percentage breakdown of which answer option other physicians chose for each question. Here's how other internists answered this one:
See how other physicians answered the same question
Read through the Detailed Answer and Explanation
Another really awesome feature about the Internal Medicine Board-Style Q&As is the super-detailed Answer and Explanation for every single question! It gives you a detailed explanation of (not only!) why the correct answer is right, but also why each distractor option is incorrect. Plus, you'll see a "Board Testing Point" at the bottom which will tell you the whole "point" of the question, so you can be on the lookout for similar issue when you're reading questions on exam day! Here are the deets on this question:
See why the correct answer is right and why the wrong answer options are incorrect
Immediately Clarify Concepts You Might Not Completely Grasp
Okay, so let's say that you read through the entire Answer and Explanation section for the question, but you need more info. Not to worry! The Internal Medicine Board-Style Q&As, Digital Internal Medicine Core, and the Internal Medicine Flashcards have "Interlinked Content." What's that mean? Well, if you want to read even more on the topic to make sure you remember it for exam day, you can go straight to that topic in the Core by clicking the "Core Topic - Dermatology..." blue text under the Answer and Explanation of the question. With that one click it will take you directly to the Core section to read more about that topic.
Read more in the digital Core directly from each Internal Medicine Board-Style Question
Analyze Your Results
For every study session, you will get a report of your overall performance to see which questions you answered correctly, incorrectly, as well as any that you skipped or bookmarked. You can also go back and review any of these questions to see the correct answers and explanations. Then, quickly fill any knowledge gaps by digging deeper into any of the explanations with the Interlinked Content. Click on the link at the end of the explanation to instantly jump to the relevant content in the Core.
Review all the answers that you missed and make sure you understand what you got wrong. Set-up another test the same way to take at a later date so you can gauge your progress and see what sections to flag for review.
Take a look at your report card after your study session or as you go to see how you're doing
Now that you know all of the features to look for, it's time to give it a try! Get 12 months of access to our Internal Medicine Board-Style Q&As or start a free trial now to start self-testing.
