The COMLEX-Clinical Skills Exam

So last weekend I went to Philadelphia to take the Clinical Skills part of my Step 2 Boards. Boards are divided up into four parts: you take Step 1 after your 2nd year of med school, and then after your 3rd year, you have to take Step 2, which has both a written component (no big deal) and a practical component (big deal). Then after your first year of residency you take Step 3.

The practical part of Step 2 is hugely stressful - you have to see 12 patients in a row, which wouldn't be a big deal, except you know going into it that there are going to be some "difficult" patients, so they can see how you handle a stressful situation, and then there are other patients who are instructed to not tell you VERY important information unless you ask using a particular buzzword...Like you'll have a middle age man there for what he says is a diabetes checkup, and the whole point of it is that he's there for erectile dysfunction, and unless you specifically ask about that, you won't get full points for that patient encounter. And then of course we had to do OMM (osteopathic musculoskeletal manipulation) on several patients, which most of us haven't done in at least a year and a half.

The redeeming part of the weekend was that I got to see Hannah & Heidi and their awesome house. It is SO neat, yet I forgot to get a picture of it! I got to their house late Saturday night, and then spent much of Sunday studying at this cute coffee shop, The Green Line. I will be ever grateful to them for their legal stimulants that helped me prepare for my test. Then we went out to brunch at the Continental, which was very cute and Austin-Powers-ey/Queer Eye for the Straight Guy-ey...

Here's the testing center:

Here's a very teeny picture of the testing room. There are 12 patient rooms, and you just rotate around in a circle till you're done.

Here is how I felt after walking out of the test:

I am reasonably sure that I passed. I made lots of mistakes (as usual) and as time goes by I remember more and more, but I think they'd have to be ridiculously strict to fail me for the things I forgot to do. So in a rapid 13 weeks or so, I'll get my results!

Afterwards I met up with Hannah & Heidi again and we went to the City Tavern, this really neat restaurant in the oldest part of town, where servers dress in 18th-century clothes and the menu is strictly authentic. Everything served is something they would've eaten in Ben Franklin's day. Apparently the Founding Fathers celebrated the end of the Constitutional Convention there, and the first Fourth of July celebration was held there. Pretty neat! My favorite thing was the pewter goblets in which water was served :

The sign outside the City Tavern:

Afterwards we went and engaged in a timeless Philadelphia tradition...walking by the Liberty Bell and taking a picture of it. It takes time to get a ticket to get inside the building, and then you have to wait in line to see it, so it's much better to just walk by the outside and see it, which is apparently what most Philadelphians do. So I call this picture, "View of the Liberty Bell from the Street."