The National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) is an organization that designed the USMLE and is dedicated to designing high-quality assessments for health-care professionals.  The NBME created the IFOM – International Foundations of Medicine exam in 2010, dedicated to assessing the core knowledge of international students taking the exam. The USMLE traditionally has included many exam questions that were largely US-focused, such as population health, public health, and healthcare questions. International medical students tend to score lower in these domains, considering that they typically were not taught US-centric healthcare questions. The IFOM has two exams, the BSE – Basic Science Exam [...]

Almost every medical student in the USA knows the unforgettable acronym USMLE Step 1-3 Exams – the dreaded exam, which plays one of the most important factors in selection to residency. For those who do not know, the USMLE is comprised of a basic sciences exam (typically taken after 2nd year) and the clinical skills exam (taken after 4th year), and your scores depend heavily on whether or not you will be matched. The National Board of Medical Examiners, NBME, created the USMLE, and all three steps of the USMLE exam must be passed before a physician with an M.D. degree [...]