The purpose of Step 3 is to determine if a physician possesses and can apply the medical knowledge and understanding of clinical science considered essential for the unsupervised practice of medicine, with emphasis on patient management in ambulatory care settings. The inclusion of Step 3 in the USMLE sequence of licensing examinations ensures that attention is devoted to the importance of assessing the knowledge and skills of physicians who are assuming independent responsibility for providing general medical care to patients.
* Step 3 emphasizes selected physician tasks, namely, evaluating severity of patient problems and managing therapy. Assessment of clinical judgment will be prominent.
* Clinical problems involve mainstream, high-impact diseases. Provision is made for less common but important clinical problems as well.
* Test items and cases are patient centered, starting with a description of a clinical encounter (vignette). Both the multiple-choice items and case simulations pose action-related challenges that require clinical decisions or judgment.
* Emphasis is on ambulatory patient encounters; however, inpatient encounters of significant complexity and reflecting contemporary trends also are represented.
* Provision is made for incorporating applied basic science concepts, especially as they relate to justification for prognosis or management. It is assumed that basic science and clinical fundamentals have been assessed adequately in the prerequisite Step 1 and Step 2 examinations.
Purpose of USMLE Step 3 Exam