ENARE common mistakes
ENARE · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Spending disproportionate time on a single hard question in the first pass, leaving later straightforward questions unanswered because the clock runs out.
ENARE is a high-volume, time-pressured exam and candidates who are used to slower university assessments try to fully solve every item before moving on, treating unanswered items as impossible rather than as a scheduling decision.
What to do instead
Adopt a strict three-pass routine: answer only items solvable in under ~90 seconds, flag the rest, then return to flagged items, and reserve the final minutes for transferring answers and guessing on any blank item (there is no penalty for wrong answers in this format).
Misreading the stem's final command word (e.g., 'incorreta', 'exceto', 'mais provável') and choosing the correct-but-opposite alternative.
Many items are written with a positive clinical statement followed by a negative qualifier at the very end; under time pressure the eye anchors on the disease name and the qualifier is skipped.
What to do instead
Physically underline or circle the command word before reading the alternatives, and re-read the last line of the stem after selecting an answer to confirm the polarity matches.
Choosing the 'most complete' or 'most sophisticated' option rather than the one that answers the specific question, especially on primary-care and SUS organization items.
Candidates trained to value comprehensiveness equate longer, more technical answers with correctness, but ENARE frequently tests the correct level of care, the correct referral flow, or the first-line (not best-in-class) intervention.
What to do instead
Before reading options, state to yourself what the question is actually asking (diagnosis, next step, level of care, conduct), then eliminate any option that answers a different question even if the statement itself is true.
Confusing the levels of the SUS care network and the direction of referral (e.g., placing a procedure at the wrong complexity level, or mixing up the roles of primary care, SAMU, and hospital care).
Multiprofessional and uniprofessional candidates often memorize isolated facts about programs and policies without building a mental map of the network's flow and gatekeeping logic, which the exam repeatedly probes.
What to do instead
Build a one-page diagram of the Rede de Atenção à Saúde (APS as gatekeeper and coordinator, urgency/emergency, specialized outpatient, hospital, and surveillance) and rehearse placing each common condition and program onto that map.
Applying a remembered protocol number or threshold without checking the patient's context (age, weight, pregnancy, comorbidity) that the stem deliberately changes.
Candidates rehearse thresholds as bare facts and then pattern-match on the disease name, missing that the item was constructed to test the exception or the adjustment.
What to do instead
For every numeric or protocol item, explicitly list in the margin the modifiers present in the stem (age, weight, gestational status, renal/hepatic function) and only then recall the rule; practice with paired items that differ by one modifier.
Answering epidemiology and biostatistics items by intuition instead of applying the definition (e.g., confusing incidence with prevalence, sensitivity with positive predictive value, or relative risk with odds ratio).
These items are short and look familiar, so candidates answer from vague memory; the distinctions are definitional and cannot be recovered by clinical reasoning.
What to do instead
Drill a small fixed set of definitions with one worked example each (2x2 table for sensitivity/specificity/PPV/NPV, cohort vs case-control for RR vs OR, incidence as new cases over person-time) and always sketch the 2x2 table before answering.
On multidisciplinary items, answering from one's own profession's scope when the question is framed for the team or for another category.
The multiprofessional and uniprofessional papers share a common core but include profession-specific and team-process items; candidates over-rely on their own training and on generic 'teamwork' language.
What to do instead
Read the item's framing first to identify whether it targets shared core content or a specific professional scope, and study the common-core competencies (SUS, bioethics, health surveillance, teamwork, communication) separately from the profession-specific block.
Skipping the interpretation step on ethics and legal items and choosing the option that sounds most empathetic rather than the one consistent with autonomy, confidentiality, and current regulation.
Bioethics items are written so that several options are emotionally appealing; candidates who have not internalized the priority order of principles (autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice) default to the kindest-sounding answer.
What to do instead
For each ethics item, identify the conflicting principles and apply a fixed priority check (patient autonomy and informed consent first, then confidentiality and its legal exceptions), and review the specific statutes on notification, consent, and professional secrecy.
Leaving the answer sheet transfer and the review of flagged items to the last two minutes, then making transcription errors or leaving items blank.
Candidates plan to 'transfer everything at the end' but underestimate the time needed and the cognitive cost of doing it while anxious.
What to do instead
Transfer answers in blocks (e.g., every 20 items) rather than all at once, and use a final five-minute check that only verifies that every line is filled and that no answer was shifted by one position.
Studying only by re-reading summaries and never simulating the exam's format, so timing, stamina, and the negative-qualifier habit are untested until exam day.
Recognition-based study feels productive but does not build the retrieval speed and sustained attention the exam requires, and candidates discover their pacing problem only in the real sitting.
What to do instead
Do at least four full-length timed mock sittings under exam conditions in the final weeks, then review every error by classifying it (content gap, misread command word, timing, or guessing) and target the dominant category.