Ward Wisdom: Psychiatry Questions for Medical Students, Written by Medical Students

This selection of practice questions is designed to help third-year medical students studying for their psychiatry shelf exam. An easy-to-read review, it contains over a hundred questions that span the range of subjects covered on the exam.

There are many books available for content review, but very few provide numerous practice questions for exam prep. This text should be used as an adjunct during a psychiatric clerkship. These are the most up-to-date high-yield questions, written by third-year medical students from Rutgers New Jersey Medical School during their own time on the wards.

The questions and answers were reviewed by fourth-year medical students, psychiatry residents, and attending psychiatrists to ensure completeness, accuracy, and relevance to the exam. Each question follows a short vignette about a situation the student might face, followed by multiple choices. On subsequent pages, explanations are provided to show why the answer is correct as well as how the alternative answers are not the best choices.

While the entire class of 2017 submitted questions, overarching credit for this learning supplement goes to Hanan Khairalla, MD; Lawrence Vaynerchuk, MD; James Sherer, BA; Sean Dikdan, BS, MPH; Erin Zerbo, MD; and Petros Levounis, MD, MA.

Hanan Khairalla, MD, is a third-year psychiatry resident at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

Lawrence Vaynerchuk, MD, is a first-year psychiatry resident at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

James Sherer, BA, is a fourth-year medical student at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

Sean Dikdan, BS, MPH, is a fourth-year medical student at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

Erin Zerbo, MD, is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

Petros Levounis, MD, MA, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and Chief of Service at University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey.