Blueprint Med School Blog (formerly Cram Fighter & Med School Tutors)

The blog for Blueprint Medical, supporting your MedEd journey with our exam study planner, tutoring, residency consulting, and advanced boards.

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How to Ace the Surgery Shelf Exam

The general surgery clerkship is known for being one of the most challenging rotations for third-year medical students. You spend long hours in the wards and operating room, navigate a hectic schedule with frequent calls, and find yourself left with little time to study in between. After weeks of this busy schedule on different surgery

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Best Shelf Exam Study Resources: A Comparison & Breakdown

Balancing your clinical responsibilities with studying for shelf exams can be daunting. What’s more, there are so many resources it can be equally intimidating to figure out how to study. However, your shelf exams are crucial for setting yourself up for success on Step 2 (especially important now that Step 1 is pass/fail), so it’s

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Medical School: Expectation vs Reality

I don’t know about you, but before starting medical school, I was excited. Having not grown up with a medical background (no one in my immediate or extended family worked in medicine in the U.S.), I gained all of my initial perceptions about the medical field through media. It may sound silly, but my first

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How to Study For Shelf Exams: A Tutor’s Guide

As you progress through medical school and the structure of your educational curriculum evolves, how you learn will also change. The most dramatic transition happens when you start your clinical rotations. In the process, you move from classroom-based or online learning with content developed by your medical school (e.g., lectures, online modules, and labs) to

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How to Honor Your Clerkships

Now that you’re in your clinical years of medical school, you finally get to transition from the classroom to the clinical setting and learn how to take care of patients during rotations. While it’s an exciting and invigorating experience, this phase can also become challenging and stressful. Not only are you trying to learn how

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How to Introduce Yourself to Patients During Rotations

It’s your third year of medical school, and you are most excited to start rotations. Finally, Step 1 is behind you, the lectures and slides can take a back seat, and you can finally start seeing some patients. The light at the end of the medical school tunnel is beginning to materialize.  You walk into

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Day in the Life of a Medical Student: Elective Rotation

If you’ve made it to an outpatient clinic or elective rotation, that means you’ve probably completed a significant chunk of your inpatient core rotations. Congrats! Outpatient medicine and inpatient medicine can be a night and day difference. Generally, outpatient clinic and non-inpatient elective rotations have fewer hours when compared to inpatient rotations. However, they can

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How to Introduce Yourself to Physicians During Rotations

It’s 2 a.m., time to place another epidural. This is a day in the life of an anesthesiologist on call. I pull up a chair at the nearest computer and start to place orders.  “Hi, I’m Steve. I’m the medical student on OB, but I’m really interested in anesthesia. Can I observe you place the

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