For those who have taken the AP/CP board

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Did you get many questions on lab management and forensic pathology? Are they difficult?
thanks

Originally Posted by greencreek

Did you get many questions on lab management and forensic pathology? Are they difficult?
thanks

Speaking for the AP portion--very few and not difficult. Both are less tested on the boards than they are on the RISE. For forensics there were literally two or three questions. I can't say whether there might be more management questions on the CP boards.

Only had 2 questions on FP on my boards. It is NOT worth studying. And I'm a forensic pathologist. If you get something you know, lovely; if not, oh well. Surg path and cyto will make or break you - that's where you ought to devote your efforts.

... and hemepath... good for AP, CP, and molecular.

Originally Posted by KluverB

... and hemepath... good for AP, CP, and molecular.

Yep, agree. Didn't specifically mention it because I think of hemepath under my surgpath training, but definitely saw plenty of it on the AP exam (virtually all bone marrow cores or lymph nodes, all H&E, all 'what is it?' rather than second order questions).

thanks a lot for all the useful info, i will return my books of forensic pathology and lab management to the library. reah, they are kind of heavy on the rise exam which concerned me.

for hemepath, do you think WHO 2008 images are enough? if not, which books or resources do you recommend?

for molecular, is the clinical compendium and its companion enough?

thanks again

Don't put away the lab management book yet. There were plenty of lab management questions on my CP exam.

Hi,Dawn...
Ok, I will keep the lab management book.
For your CP lab management part, did you just use Henry's or something else?
thxs

I've only read the electrophoresis part of Henry's.

For lab management, I heavily relied on our residency's lab management rotations and didactics. There's a question book called "Success" that had some really good lab management practice questions and explanations.

I used to do like a 45 minute forensic talk not long before the RISE every year, which pretty consistently covered the main things that came up in that at least; I've heard similar from other programs, as there's usually that one resident in many mid to larger programs who has some particular forensic interest. The boards might claim they ask more on it, but other people might just call them neuro or cardiac surg path type questions which just happened to come as autopsy specimens. My impression is that it's one area in which ABPath's claims of the boards being relevant to average daily practice is accurate, as most pathologists will never do a forensic case as an attending (unless it's something real easy, like Kennedy with a bunch of Secret Service and military personnel and family bugging you).

Thanks all for the useful info

A lot of the "lab management" questions relate to statistical stuff like sensitivty, specificity, PPV, NPV, etc. I would also be familiar with important CLIA issues and the Bethesda guidelines for paps. I think I had a couple of questions on those.

Originally Posted by KCShaw

I used to do like a 45 minute forensic talk not long before the RISE every year, which pretty consistently covered the main things that came up in that at least; I've heard similar from other programs, as there's usually that one resident in many mid to larger programs who has some particular forensic interest.

Agreed - one of our seniors from last year (now a forensics fellow) made a nice forensics review for us to look over before the RISE which seems to cover most of the more commonly asked topics.

Originally Posted by Dawn1980

Don't put away the lab management book yet. There were plenty of lab management questions on my CP exam.

Agree. I took it in 09' and CP was overrun with lab admin c assloads of blood bank and micro. I had only a handful of molecular on either AP or CP and they were basic knowledge, although I'm being told new things are creeping in- oncotype, MLH, ALK/EGFR, etc.