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.
Hang in there -- honestly your scores are closer than you think. I was stuck around 65-70% two weeks ago and just hit a 78% yesterday, which felt huge. The physiology edge cases are brutal but once I started working through the ecmo procedure breakdowns step by step instead of just drilling questions, stuff started clicking way faster than I expected.
I'm sitting mine in 10 days and I won't pretend I'm not nervous. But 68-72% at three weeks out with consistent daily practice? You're on a solid trajectory. Keep that weekend mock routine going, it's the closest thing to real exam conditions you'll get.
I failed my first attempt with a 69%, so I know exactly where you're at right now. What killed me wasn't the clinical stuff — I had that down. It was the physiology edge cases, same as you. Second time around I stopped drilling random questions and started mapping out the "why" behind each wrong answer. Like, I didn't just mark it wrong and move on, I'd actually trace it back to the underlying mechanism until it clicked. I also spent a week really digging into ecmo procedure specifics and how small deviations in flow mechanics cascade into bigger problems — that mindset shift helped more than any question bank.
68-72% three weeks out is not as bad as it feels. I was scoring similar and passed with an 81% on attempt two. The anxiety is normal but don't let it make you study more randomly — study more specifically. Figure out which physiology concepts keep tripping you up and own those completely. You've got the clinical hours, that's not nothing.