Canada-wide medical education project

[Daniel Kozan]

I'm a first year surgery resident at the U of S. Throughout medical school I created an interactive medical education website called QuizMD. It’s a high-quality exam question bank that is peer-reviewed and allows material to be refined by rating and discussion.

 

The URL is http://quiz.md

 

It's completely free and run entirely by student volunteers, mostly at U of A and U of S. Our goal is to create the ultimate free resource for practice exam questions for med students to be used worldwide.

 

It's all I used to study for the MCCQE, and I did quite well! I also used it extensively in preparation for block tests in the pre-clinical years and before our comprehensive finals in 3rd and 4th year. I hope you find it useful too.

 

Please reply with any feedback you have about the site.

[DubZteR]

I'm a first year surgery resident at the U of S. Throughout medical school I created an interactive medical education website called QuizMD. It’s a high-quality exam question bank that is peer-reviewed and allows material to be refined by rating and discussion.

 

The URL is http://quiz.md

 

It's completely free and run entirely by student volunteers, mostly at U of A and U of S. Our goal is to create the ultimate free resource for practice exam questions for med students to be used worldwide.

 

It's all I used to study for the MCCQE, and I did quite well! I also used it extensively in preparation for block tests in the pre-clinical years and before our comprehensive finals in 3rd and 4th year. I hope you find it useful too.

 

Please reply with any feedback you have about the site.

 

Hey Daniel,

 

Nice job setting up the project. This is a good free resource for students. I'm wondering if you plan on providing explanations for the questions?

 

One of the questions I came across on the site was .. "What is the cause of death in a patient who had lung cancer followed by ventricular tachycardia and cardiac arrest?"

 

a. cardiac arrest

b. none of the above

c. lung cancer

d. ventricular tachycardia

 

The answer given was lung cancer but the question says the patient "had" lung cancer. One would also argue that acute cardiac arrest is also more likely to kill the patient even in the background of an active lung cancer.

[Mourning Cloak]

Hey Daniel,

 

Nice job setting up the project. This is a good free resource for students. I'm wondering if you plan on providing explanations for the questions?

 

One of the questions I came across on the site was .. "What is the cause of death in a patient who had lung cancer followed by ventricular tachycardia and cardiac arrest?"

 

a. cardiac arrest

b. none of the above

c. lung cancer

d. ventricular tachycardia

 

The answer given was lung cancer but the question says the patient "had" lung cancer. One would also argue that acute cardiac arrest is also more likely to kill the patient even in the background of an active lung cancer.

 

"Cause of death" is a very specific forensic pathology term, and things like "cardiorespiratory arrest" are NOT causes of death. (Otherwise everybody would die of cardiac arrest, since everyone's heart eventually stops beating).

 

So what is the cause of death? Ask yourself: what were the circumstances (e.g. drowning, trauma) or disease (coronary artery disease, diabetes mellitus) that led to the patient's death? In this case, presumably lung cancer was the cause of death, with tachycardia being the mechanism of death, and arrest being . . . well, arrest being death itself. Manner of death: natural.

 

Sorry - no references for this. There's not much on forensic pathology on the web. Really good book, though, that might be in your school library is Di Maio & Di Maio's Forensic Pathology.

[DubZteR]

"Cause of death" is a very specific forensic pathology term, and things like "cardiorespiratory arrest" are NOT causes of death. (Otherwise everybody would die of cardiac arrest, since everyone's heart eventually stops beating).

 

So what is the cause of death? Ask yourself: what were the circumstances (e.g. drowning, trauma) or disease (coronary artery disease, diabetes mellitus) that led to the patient's death? In this case, presumably lung cancer was the cause of death, with tachycardia being the mechanism of death, and arrest being . . . well, arrest being death itself. Manner of death: natural.

 

Sorry - no references for this. There's not much on forensic pathology on the web. Really good book, though, that might be in your school library is Di Maio & Di Maio's Forensic Pathology.

 

I still don't know how can you presume lung cancer was the cause of death in this case when the question is specifically worded as "the patient had lung cancer" rather than the patient has lung cancer. Personally, I picked "none of the above".

[Mourning Cloak]

Interesting take. When I read it, I assumed it reflected the past tense because he's dead e.g. the patient in bed 3 has lung cancer, the same guy at M&M had lung cancer.

[Nobodycirclesthewagons]

I still don't know how can you presume lung cancer was the cause of death in this case when the question is specifically worded as "the patient had lung cancer" rather than the patient has lung cancer. Personally, I picked "none of the above".

 

Like Mourning Cloak said, the reason the question said "had lung cancer" is because the person died. That's the reason for the past tense.

[tooty]

Daniel, as Dubzter mentioned, I think the questions would be much more useful if each answer had accompanying explanations. It is a lot more work and will likely slow the rate at which questions are entered but those questions would be several times more useful to study from imo.

 

Maybe residents or upper year med students can do with a simple answer. But as a 1st and 2nd year med student, I opted for question banks that provided full solutions.

[zxcv]

Ditto explanation needed.

 

Also, do you have an feeds button. Couldn't find it.

[leviathan]

I haven't studied any forensic path or how people determine 'cause of death', but I would have assumed the cause of death was ventricular tachycardia. Sure the patient had lung cancer, but we don't know if it was a complication of their lung CA that put their heart in vtach can we? What if the patient also had severe coronary artery disease and structural heart disease that caused the vtach?