LMCC Exam Prep

[Satsuma]

http://www.lmccexams.com/LMCC-Exams

 

Anyone have any experience with the exams on the above site? Were they worthwhile?

How representative are the exams?

Do you recommend them?

 

Thanks

[Ollie]

My advice for studying for the LMCC is do not spend too much time studying and definitely do not spend money on extra review book or practice exams.

 

I studied for less than 2 weeks total. Basically I read through Toronto Notes. I spent one day on Psyc, two days on peds, two days on ObGyn, one day on community/public health. The rest of the time I did practice tests. We had lots of old tests handed down from previous years. I didn't specifically study medicine or surgery, I just reviewed what I thought I was weak on based on my practice tests. Remember that internal medicine is 1/6 of the exam, so it's pretty low yield to study it, whereas psyc and community health are each 1/6 so are pretty high yield.

 

A good 30% of the exam is totally random stuff that you would never know regardless of how long you studied. There is seriously no way you can fail this exam unless you slept through all of med school or have little to no understanding of english.

[ploughboy]

There is seriously no way you can fail this exam unless you slept through all of med school

 

I am *so* screwed...

[Ian Wong]

Ollie is correct.

 

If you have a pulse, speak fluent English (if you are taking the English version), and are on track to graduate from a Canadian med school, you'll do fine. There was pretty minimal emphasis on preparing for this exam at UBC, and I think I and my classmates had no problem with it at all.

 

I really think this exam presents much more of a hurdle for the international-trained physicians, particularly those people who have been practising physicians in other countries, and therefore are being examined on multiple areas outside their specialty.

 

Definitely don't buy any practice exams for this. The one thing I would recommend is figuring out the epidemiology/biostatistics stuff. There's some book out there that covers this pretty well; hopefully someone who has taken the exam more recently remembers the name of it and the author. A lot of those sorts of questions seemed to come near verbatim from that book.

 

Ian

[BlackJack]

I can't remember where I obtained this figure, but something like 98% of test takers pass this thing. The ones that don't are FMGs who can't understand English fluently - they fail on account of their lack of understanding of our mother tongue!

 

I'm not even going to open a book for this thing. If the years of training in med school hasn't prepared me enough to pass a stupid test that basically everyone else passes, then I'm getting an MRI head.

[Satsuma]

Good advice...I like saving my money!

 

Thanks

[clinicalchief]

Any word on that book Ian mentioned above?

 

Thanks

[Ollie]

Any word on that book Ian mentioned above?

 

Thanks

 

It might be "Public Health and Preventive Medicine in Canada" by Shah. It was one of our "required" books in med school. I certainly wouldn't read all of it, but one of the chapters goes through all the stats that the LMCC seems to love to test (like what percentage of health care spending goes to hospitals).

[clinicalchief]

Thanks, much appreciated

[leviathan]

Do you get a score for your result, or is it strictly Pass/Fail? If the latter, can program directors still see the raw score, and does it make a difference to your residency match?

[JayP]

I'm not sure how it would make a difference for residency when match results are tomorrow and the 4th years haven't written the LMCC part 1 yet.

[Satsuma]

Do you get a score for your result, or is it strictly Pass/Fail? If the latter, can program directors still see the raw score, and does it make a difference to your residency match?

 

I don`t know about the score or whether the program directors can see your score.

But I have heard it doesn`t make a difference to your match...you will already be matched by the time you take the exam.

So you still start residency, and you write the exam in the next sitting...which I think might be the fall??? And until you pass it you just need to get your prescriptions co-signed...which would kind of be a pain and since you would be the only resident to need co-signs and who is unable to cosign the clerks orders, everyone would know you failed the exam!!

[blinknoodle]

You get an actual score, if I recall correctly, but it only matters if you pass or fail. It has no bearing on whether you match. If you fail, then, as Satsuma said, you need your scripts co-signed until you pass the exam. I can't say I have ever heard of a resident failing the LMCC, but I think it is set for the lowest 5% overall score. You can fail different sections provided you pass overall. I don't recall if it is a numerical addition or they do something funky to get your overall score.

[leviathan]

I'm not sure how it would make a difference for residency when match results are tomorrow and the 4th years haven't written the LMCC part 1 yet.

Oooops, my bad. For some reason I thougth I had to write it when applying to residency.