About this ebook
Your CST date is on the calendar. Ahead of it: 505 questions with every option explained, three timed 110-question practice exams, a 12-day plan weighted the way the outline is. No login, no expiry.
We built this the way a surgical technology instructor runs a lab rotation, not the way a shelf gets filled. NBSTSA delivers 175 items in four hours. Only 150 of them count; the other 25 are unscored pretest items scattered through the paper. Perioperative care is 97 of those 150, basic science 30, ancillary duties 23. So eight of your twelve days go where 97 items live, two to basic science, two to ancillary duties. Check us against NBSTSA's published content outline, effective January 2023. We would rather you did.
What's inside
A 25-question diagnostic before you read anything. You find the weak area on the first evening, not after the second mock.
Eight days where two thirds of the exam lives: room setup, the patient and the field, three days inside the specialties, closing and turnover.
505 original questions with rationales. Daily quizzes, two cumulative reviews that interleave earlier days, and three timed papers weighted to the outline's shares.
The sterile field, step by step: gowning and gloving, establishing and defending the field, counts and their timing, positioning, skin prep, draping, hemostasis, wound closure.
Every specialty's room: general and GI, OB-GYN, genitourinary, orthopedic, ENT, ophthalmic, oral-maxillofacial, plastics, cardiothoracic, vascular, neurosurgery. The exam asks what belongs on the Mayo stand for each.
Figures you can picture mid-case: sterile field zones, the gowning and gloving sequence, Mayo stand and back table setup, the count workflow, the sterilization cycle. Maybe the last review book you opened was a list of instruments with a quiz behind it. Give it three evenings. If the diagnostic tells you nothing about your own weak area, put it down. An hour is all it cost.
This book suits three readers. A surgical technology student sitting the exam after a program. A tech testing under the on-the-job route. Someone retaking it who wants their hours aimed. If you scrub cases every week, start at Day 6.
Day 8 puts cardiothoracic, vascular and neuro in one evening, and it is a lot. Get through it and you'll find the specialty questions stop blurring together. Downloaded once, yours to keep.
— The Passmark Publishing Team
An independent study guide from Passmark Publishing. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Board of Surgical Technology and Surgical Assisting. CST and Certified Surgical Technologist are trademarks of NBSTSA. For exam preparation only; not medical advice, and no substitute for your facility's policies or your program's clinical training.
We built this the way a surgical technology instructor runs a lab rotation, not the way a shelf gets filled. NBSTSA delivers 175 items in four hours. Only 150 of them count; the other 25 are unscored pretest items scattered through the paper. Perioperative care is 97 of those 150, basic science 30, ancillary duties 23. So eight of your twelve days go where 97 items live, two to basic science, two to ancillary duties. Check us against NBSTSA's published content outline, effective January 2023. We would rather you did.
What's inside
A 25-question diagnostic before you read anything. You find the weak area on the first evening, not after the second mock.
Eight days where two thirds of the exam lives: room setup, the patient and the field, three days inside the specialties, closing and turnover.
505 original questions with rationales. Daily quizzes, two cumulative reviews that interleave earlier days, and three timed papers weighted to the outline's shares.
The sterile field, step by step: gowning and gloving, establishing and defending the field, counts and their timing, positioning, skin prep, draping, hemostasis, wound closure.
Every specialty's room: general and GI, OB-GYN, genitourinary, orthopedic, ENT, ophthalmic, oral-maxillofacial, plastics, cardiothoracic, vascular, neurosurgery. The exam asks what belongs on the Mayo stand for each.
Figures you can picture mid-case: sterile field zones, the gowning and gloving sequence, Mayo stand and back table setup, the count workflow, the sterilization cycle. Maybe the last review book you opened was a list of instruments with a quiz behind it. Give it three evenings. If the diagnostic tells you nothing about your own weak area, put it down. An hour is all it cost.
This book suits three readers. A surgical technology student sitting the exam after a program. A tech testing under the on-the-job route. Someone retaking it who wants their hours aimed. If you scrub cases every week, start at Day 6.
Day 8 puts cardiothoracic, vascular and neuro in one evening, and it is a lot. Get through it and you'll find the specialty questions stop blurring together. Downloaded once, yours to keep.
— The Passmark Publishing Team
An independent study guide from Passmark Publishing. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Board of Surgical Technology and Surgical Assisting. CST and Certified Surgical Technologist are trademarks of NBSTSA. For exam preparation only; not medical advice, and no substitute for your facility's policies or your program's clinical training.
Your CST date is on the calendar. Ahead of it: 505 questions with every option explained, three timed 110-question practice exams, a 12-day plan weighted the way the outline is. No login, no expiry.
We built this the way a surgical technology instructor runs a lab rotation, not the way a shelf ...
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About the author
Passmark builds one kind of book: the one that makes your study hours count. We start from a simple conviction — a certification exam is a skills test, not a memory test — so we never hand you a wall of facts to reread. Our method comes from the science of how memory actually holds: you learn by retrieving, not rereading; you revisit on a widening schedule so it sticks; every answer is explained, right and wrong, so you keep the reasoning; and a diagnostic points your hours where they will move your score. We read each exam's current blueprint ourselves, write every question from scratch, and check every number in the book — question counts, domain weights, practice tests — against the finished pages, not the marketing. When an exam changes, our books change with it.
Passmark builds one kind of book: the one that makes your study hours count. We start from a simple conviction — a certification exam is a skills test, not a memory test — so we never hand you a wall of facts to reread. Our method comes from the science of how memory actually holds: you learn by ...
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