The M5 Boards Review for Anesthesiology website is unlike anything else available for studying for the ABA written board exam.
The M5 question bank is a collection of high yield question topics with comprehensive explanations. In fact, it is the high quality of the explanations that allow across-the-board preparation for the most important exams of your life, so far. Here are 5 important reasons that the M5 is the single best study resource for your preparation for the boards:
REASON 1: Comprehensive Question Based Learning.
It is not a coincidence that question based learning materials are one of the most popular study resources for medical students, especially when it comes to the boards. Chances are, you have used such a source (either paperback or on-line) for USMLE preparation. The M5 question bank have high quality questions that are board relevant, specifically designed and written to enhance learning of a wide variety of subjects and help integrate them for exam recall. Dreams of getting questions of what the partition coefficient of sevoflurane is or how much pressure is left in an oxygen tank should die now. The boards will test your ability to understand how coagulopathy, renal disease, cirrhosis, and seizure disorder will affect your anesthetic management. You NEED to know this stuff! From basic concepts like pharmacology, sensory distributions, and oxygen utilization to pathophysiologic principles such as cardiac physiology, neurophysiology, and obstetrics and on to clinical matters such as neuraxial anesthesia, cardiopulmonary bypass, and malignant hyperthermia, M5 has it ALL covered.
REASON 2: M5 IS Continually Updated and Reviewed
The M5 question bank is the backbone of an entire board review system including independent study and interactive lectures. It has been the interactive nature of lectures, and now interactions with you over the internet, through your feedback answering these questions, that has allowed and continues to allow enhancement of the questions and explanations. By making the question bank available on-line, this whole process has beene expanded to a broad audience, and with your continual feedback, the M5 is continually enhanced! Furthermore, on-going development of questions is one of many advantages the M5 has over out-of-date print question based learning materials, (even when the publisher makes the 20 year old questions available on-line).
REASON 3: No Gimmicks, Just Up-To-Date Board-Relevant Information
There is no possible way that anyone (including us) can guarantee you will pass the boards. It is a function of your study habits and knowledge base as well as the quality of the materials utalized. Just like reading Miller’s Anesthesia cover-to-cover is a poor strategy for passing the boards, so is reviewing information from 15 year old exams and concentrating on remembered questions from last year. There is an inherent rate of repeat in questions form year to year, but the vast majority of questions have not been asked before. There IS, however, a very high rate of repeating concepts and emphases. The M5 teaches concepts with the emphasis on understanding so that the information can be extrapolated to the specific question on your exam; not the emphasis on factoids and route memorization that has failed many of those who relied heavily on those types of resources.
REASON 4: The Explanations
The explanations in the M5 boards review are carefully crafted and are a continual work in progress, laser focused on making the learning of board worthy concepts its primary goal. By reading the question, all of the answer choices, and explanation, you will quickly find that most questions prepare you to answer a variety of different potential board questions. The explanations are concise yet comprehensive, and not bogged down in technicalities and references you’ll never read. Furthermore, like the actual boards, some questions are intentionally written to have two right answers, with one being “more right.” The M5 explanations help you decipher why answer A leads to board certification and answer B leads to retaking the exam next year.
REASON 5: Take it Anywhere, Anytime
The M5 was designed to be used on your phone or tablet (as well as your home computer), because that’s the way you live. Study a few questions on the bus, while waiting for your oil change, or in the OR. Wherever you go with your phone, the M5 goes with you. Carrying books with you from place to place is burdensome and unrealistic with the final result being numerous wasted opportunities for study. If you have an internet connection, you have the M5.