Testing in 3 weeks and I'm spiraling a bit. I've been an ECMO specialist for 18 months and I know the clinical stuff well. But practice questions keep catching me on the physiology edge cases.
Doing 90 minutes every evening plus a full mock exam on weekends. Scoring around 68-72% on mocks, which isn't where I want to be. Passing is 70% but I'd feel much better hitting 78+ consistently.
Found a solid set of resources covering extracorporeal membrane oxygenation in neonates that helped me fill in some gaps. Still feel shaky on anticoagulation management questions though. Anyone else find those tricky?
Anticoagulation was the hardest section for me too. Know your ACT targets cold and understand how heparin adjustments interact with circuit changes.
The neonatal-specific questions are more detailed than adult ECMO. If you're mostly doing adult cases, spend extra time on the neonatal physiology differences.
Mock exams are good but don't just check answers — write out WHY each wrong answer was wrong. That's what moved my scores up 8 points in two weeks.
68-72% three weeks out is fine. I was scoring 66% two weeks before my test and passed with a 74. The last week of focused review made a big difference.