MCCQE Part 1

[rmorelan]

How did you find the exam in general? I have heard from a few people that they walked out of the test feeling like they failed, but then ended up doing quite well. is it really that hard to assess how your doing during the exam?

 

ha - sooo difficult to know. The test is a very strange beast really.

 

Still it is has a huge pass rate so not much to be worried about.

[thebouque]

Coming out of the test, I thought I had failed but I ended up passing with flying colors

[max2000]

i dunno coming out of it , it felt like hmm alright and a shoulder shrug.

 

then theres also people thinking they failed and people thinking it was really easy.

 

theres also people who tell everyone they dont need to study though the few people I know saying this have spent a good amount studying.

 

seems like as long as you do what youre used to doing it should be fine

[aoank]

Hi Guys,

For example,

Does anyone know whether I can use DM to stand for diabetes mellitus in CDM?

 

Thanks a lot.

[spontaneouscombustion]

Man, I feel like studying for this exam was a complete waste of time. The entire challenge in the exam is trying to read their mind. The CDM is a joke.

 

I probably signed some sort of NDA somewhere along the line so I won't give away the question here, but I was asked an open ended question on counselling patient about avoiding relapse of a psychiatric condition).

 

Really? You're asking on advice on how to manage a complex illness thats just as strongly entrenched in sociology and psychology as it is in biology, and then you want me to distill that advice into 6 or less one-word answers? Ugh.

 

Someone let me know if they think I'm violating any LMCC rules here. I'll delete it if so. Just needed to rant.

[1fuzzy2dino3]

Did anyone buy the self administered exam? and how did you find it?

did they give you the right answers if you got the question wrong?

 

thanks!

 

EDIT:

 

were you able to take a print out of the exam?

[burrb]

Hi Guys,

For example,

Does anyone know whether I can use DM to stand for diabetes mellitus in CDM?

 

Thanks a lot.

^yup totally ok to use acronyms..I mean why not? It will save you so much time and there's no way the markers won't know what you're talking about.

[ldnk]

Have to say, that's not a very fun exam to write. You really feel when the questions start the ramp up, and then by the time you get to the end of the multiple choice the questions had trended back down to manageable. That exam put me in my place.

[collins]

Worst exam, in terms of design, I have ever written. Half the time I didn't even feel like it was a medical exam, just a random stem with random choices. Absolutely brutal experience.

[ER scrub]

I just don't understand the emphasis on speed (for the MCQ) and verbal comprehension. For the latter, I felt like I was writing verbal on the MCAT at some points, that or the questions were just being written in a way to make them overly difficult when in fact the medicine itself was not.

 

Kind of embarrassing this is the way medical students are evaluated after four years , you'd think there would be a better way.

[ericaB]

I agree: the CDM section was a joke. It's pretty much a "guess what the heck I"m thinking" game.

[collins]

How about those PHELO questions? I read the Tnotes chapters but didn't think they helped for anything above the baseline difficulty. The harder questions were so convoluted, I barely had time to read the stem let alone reason through the choices.

 

adaptive testing just makes you feel bad about yourself.

[ER scrub]

How about those PHELO questions? I read the Tnotes chapters but didn't think they helped for anything above the baseline difficulty. The harder questions were so convoluted, I barely had time to read the stem let alone reason through the choices.

 

adaptive testing just makes you feel bad about yourself.

 

Exactly what I meant in my above post (esp for PHELO). I would read the stem, understand it, and then the question choices themselves were riddles. It wasn't even medical or phelo knowledge at that point that they were testing, it was garbage. I don't mind difficult questions or even those that test specific details once you're doing very well, but for it to become very comprehension based (assuming they actually made sense - I don't know I had to keep moving and just was blindly guessing instead of wasting my time.......seriously eff off is all I could think).

[aoank]

Hi,

 

Can an examinee take energy drink and food with him/her, but not to the examination room?

Can an examinee take a pair of earplug to the examination room?

 

Thanks,

[move.along]

So i'm guessing exam banks were not helpful by the sound of it...

[ericaB]

^yup totally ok to use acronyms..I mean why not? It will save you so much time and there's no way the markers won't know what you're talking about.

 

I heard the CDM part is marked by the computer. I would write out the abbreviations just to be sure.

[A-Stark]

This remains the weirdest exam I've ever written. I'm not sure why it's written to be a vague incoherent mess. But that's what it is. Somehow I did pretty well on it too, including the CDM section.

[GrouchoMarx]

That was a strange experience.

[burrb]

ugh I may be jumping the gun here, but they should abolish LMCC and just make us do the usmles.

 

as most people have said lmcc doesn't test medical knowledge/real clinical decision making, but rather guess what I'm thinking bs.

 

mcq section was decent -- I had straight forward pop health questions so I guess I must have bombed those questions lol but everything was pretty tricky but manageable.

 

cdm was a ****fest.

[med88]

I agree. The strangest exam I have ever taken. I could have studied half what I studied and it would not have made difference to my performance. The biggest problem with the questions is that they are so vague and out of left field. It's a shame that four years of training comes down to this.

 

MCQs were long, not enough information and not representative of what the major topics were in the field. The CDMQs started reasonable and then became a complete shiet show near the end, with everything thing being patient comes in with vague symptoms, tell us what we are thinking. Overall terrible experience.

[ER scrub]

I actually didn't have a single ECG to look at (but two NSTs!!), not a single question re: MI or COPD or Asthma or an ACL tear/etc. I'm not sure how much I can say but definitely had questions re: rarer topics and syndromes you likely didn't see in your first four years. Just odd..

[ldnk]

I actually didn't have a single ECG to look at (but two NSTs!!), not a single question re: MI or COPD or Asthma or an ACL tear/etc. I'm not sure how much I can say but definitely had questions re: rarer topics and syndromes you likely didn't see in your first four years. Just odd..

 

Same. No cardio questions, maybe 2 resp questions. No ortho questions. 3 or 4 Ophtho questions. Had 7-8 Rash type - between Peds and Derm. Just a weird subset of questions.

 

Maybe I don't really care because I'm sure I passed the thing and everything but it really didn't seem like an exam that tested your ability to be a competent R1 resident. Maybe that is just a limitation of the MCQ/CDM sections but when you give a vague passage and then it asks what you would do next...honestly 90% of the time my answer would be 'take a better history' if they offered it.

[NLengr]

When I wrote back in med school, I had a ton of cardiology.

 

The multiple choice questions were reasonably valid. The second part short answers were dumb. That part should be dropped.

 

Wait till you do LMCC part 2. That 100000000 times more useless than part 1.

[pastinpresent12]

But when you give a vague passage and then it asks what you would do next...honestly 90% of the time my answer would be 'take a better history' if they offered it.

 

Haha I actually said that in one of mine since it was a write-in question!

 

Definitely agree with those saying that many of the questions are "read my mind" types requiring huge assumptions on your part.

 

I really have no idea how I did but at least I can rest easy knowing that more studying would not have helped.

[rogerroger]

When do we know if we passed? Just wrote today and I'm anxious already

 

Unless things changed we got our results in early June I think.

 

 

 

 

I can't help but to rant, these tests are a pet peeve of mine.

 

Firstly, don't worry about this exam. The test makes most people feel crummy because it is written so badly. Unless you attended some sketchy backwater medical school, can't read or write simple English or French or happened to be acutely intoxicated while writing the exam you will pass.

 

However, in reality and with not an ounce of exaggeration, this test is a shameless money grab from the MCC. Just consider it an unofficial medical school exit "tax". I'm convinced that the MCC is a bureaucratic black hole. One giant money pit which seemingly produces basically nothing going by their own twitter page. Sadly, you will make another deposit into the "black hole" when you do part two. Fun fact: Part II is even more poorly run and useless and also costs a couple grand and several days of your life. When you are all done you will look back and it will become clear what a joke this whole process is. That's also about when you feel somewhat taken advantage of (x2) by the system and want your $3000 returned.

 

The system should be simple: If you are a CMG and pass your med school exams and convocate and then pass your royal college/CCFM exam at the end of residency you're done and can practice independently.

 

Never mind... That is way too logical and straight forward. Plus who would fund the MCC? Surely, it would be the end of medical education as we know it.

 

Rant over.