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Analyzing Questions

"A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all."
- Friedrich Nietzsche 

How to Answer Questions

How To Analyze USMLE Questions:
1. Age
2. Past Medical/Surgical History
3. Patient recent activity
4. Onset of condition
5. Differential diagnosis
6. Assessment and plan of the situation 

Question Source: 2010 Step 1 Content Description and General Information

Three weeks after traveling to California to study
desert flowers, a 32-year-old man develops a
fever, chest pain, and sore muscles. Two days
later, red tender nodules appear on the shins, and
the right ankle is painful and tender. An x-ray of
the chest shows a left pleural effusion. Which of
the following is the most likely diagnosis?

(A) Blastomycosis
(B) Coccidioidomycosis
(C) Histoplasmosis
(D) Mycobacterium marinum infection
(E) Mycoplasma pneumoniae infection

Remember Do Not Let The Answer Options Change Your Thinking
They Could Have Easily Have Written The Following As The Answers:
(A) Broad Based Buds
(B) Spherule Filled With Endospores
(C) Patient Went Splunking
(D) Begin Prophylaxis in AIDS Patients When CD4 <50
(E) The Isolated Specimens Grow on Eaton's Agar

So by using the methods 1 - 6 you should be able to dissect these questions.
If you understand the pathophysiology of a disease/process, it does not matter how they write the questions

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