What Goes In Your Pockets:

• Maxwell’s Quick Medical Reference (has a decent neuro exam cheat sheet)
• NIH stroke scale
• notepad (for MMSEs)
• reflex hammer (many neurologists prefer the Babinski percussion hammer over the traditional Taylor reflex hammer)
• cheap pen
• eye chart
• penlight
• tongue depressors
• cotton swabs
• +/- ophthalmoscope
• +/- tuning fork
• +/- stethoscope

What to Study:

• Blueprints Neurology – This is a good review book to help you study for your shelf exam, as is any text that your neuro department recommends for this rotation.
• Neurology PreTest – This is the question book most recommended by students to help study for this rotation.

DIT Study Plan:

Neurology – 4 Weeks*

*We realize that not every school has the same rotation length. We’ve based our study plans off of the most common rotation length. You may need to readjust the number of pages and questions per day for a shorter or longer rotation length. Also, our rotation study plans are based off 7-day study weeks. If you prefer to study for only 5 or 6 days per week, that’s ok, too. Just read a few more pages and do a few more questions than we suggest in this plan on the days you are studying.

**You will find that you will occasionally need to deviate from this plan so that you can “read ahead” about your patients and the cases you will be seeing. This study guide is designed to keep you on track and get you through the material enough times to do well on your shelf exam.

Other Advice:

• Learn the neuro exam well so that you have a logical order to follow. This way you won’t skip or forget things. There is a great sample OSCE score sheet available here. Learning to perform a good neuro exam should be your goal for this rotation. Ask your resident/attending to watch you perform your exam and give you feedback. Also, carefully watch them to help improve your technique.
• For the shelf, students say that you should study conditions that present neurologically (especially in the ER, e.g., infections), strokes (and be able to localize lesion), classical neuro conditions (e.g., ALS, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, tabes dorsalis, syringomylia)
• Review neuroanatomy to help localize lesions and neurophysiology/neuropharmacology to help you formulate your treatment plans.
• Seek out interesting findings in the patients on your service. This is your chance to see interesting neuro cases that you may never see again.