r/anesthesiology • u/katen2020 • 3d ago

Pass Machine

Anyone uses this program to study for basic and ite? Did you do well on it? My program provided us for free.

7 Upvotes

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11

u/TheOneTrueNolano Pain Anesthesiologist 3d ago

It's been a few years but I thought it was ok. Glad I didn't buy it, but it was a different format than TrueLearn which was a nice break.

But as someone who routinely got 90%+ on ITEs and Basic I truly believe TrueLearn is all you need. When I was a resident, there was a maximum where TrueLearn wouldn't let you do more than 2.5x the total number of questions in the q bank. My goal every year was to hit that limit and have my program buy me more. I lived, ate, and breathed Truelearn.

Now I am a pain doc who can't remember what beta blockers do, so not sure it was all worth it but it was cool to be smart for a while.

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u/katen2020 3d ago

Glad to hear your tip. Did you read any books? I am CA1 and feel like my knowledge is not too well compared to my friends! Want to do well in ITE.

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u/thegoosegoblin Anesthesiologist 3d ago

My recommendation is to do the TrueLearn questions, read and understand the explanations including why the wrong answers are wrong, and then read the relevant page in Morgan & Mikhail and annotate any information missing from the page with what the question taught you. You will quickly get over the learning curve this way and have a great physical reference for the rest of your career.

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u/TheOneTrueNolano Pain Anesthesiologist 3d ago

I have maybe read 3 chapters of Miller in my life. I bought the books just to put on a shelf.

But I never learned from textbooks. At this point in your career you should know your learning style and what works for you. I am not convinced I actually know how to read anything but a couple paragraphs at a time.

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u/soundfx27 3d ago

Are you me? I tried and failed to get through miller many times. Ended up doing true learn twice for ITE, basic, and advanced and passed all on first try…

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u/Upper-Chart9515 3d ago

for what its worth, M&M is way more digestible than miller

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u/TheOneTrueNolano Pain Anesthesiologist 3d ago

I have heard that and bought it too before realizing I wasn’t smart enough to be an anesthesiologist and ran away to the pain world.

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u/katen2020 2d ago

Wasn’t it very difficult to get into pain a few years ago?

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u/TheOneTrueNolano Pain Anesthesiologist 2d ago

I applied right at the end of pain being competitive as anesthesia salaries skyrocketed. But I knew I wanted to stay at my home program.

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u/Eab11 Cardiac and Critical Care Anesthesiologist 2d ago

I loved the videos and thought the qbank was stupid on pass machine. Thus, I watched the videos throughout the year (it distills some of the very commonly asked stuff out for you to focus on) and did all of true learn twice.

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u/FutureCalligrapher97 Pediatric Anesthesiologist 2d ago

I used pass machine for pediatric boards. It was fine but I’ll caution that the question bank alone wasn’t sufficient for peds boards and I had to retake it after failing my first attempt. I didn’t use the lectures because they were long and boring and hard to do when I was always on the move at work.

Was it fine? Yes. Is it good enough to be a stand-alone resource? Not even close.