2015 In Training Exam

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disappointed..22 as a PGY-1. Went through M&M once. Do I hit it again with Hall? (I keep hearing that Hall is outdated but just came up with a new edition). Any suggestions?
No worries. My pgy1 score was in the teens. My ca1 score was in the 40s. For most of us, the info doesn't stick unless what we read is backed up with clinical experience.

Hall is a great review book for test prep.
 
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I'm about to start my PGY1 year and my program has notified me that they will be signing us up for this ITE exam for February 2016.

I'm not going to start studying right now, but since this thread is up, I would like to take the opportunity to ask about the ITE.

I'm not the best at standardized exams so I would like to give myself a little extra time to study for these, I read some of the advice given by the posters here, but can anyone else please post what they feel like helped them and what was a waste of time for the most current ITE (also the actual names of the sources.)

I also have to take Step 3 during this year, would be great if I could kill 2 birds with 1 stone, how much overlap is there between these exams?

Thanks
 
I'm about to start my PGY1 year and my program has notified me that they will be signing us up for this ITE exam for February 2016.

I'm not going to start studying right now, but since this thread is up, I would like to take the opportunity to ask about the ITE.

I'm not the best at standardized exams so I would like to give myself a little extra time to study for these, I read some of the advice given by the posters here, but can anyone else please post what they feel like helped them and what was a waste of time for the most current ITE (also the actual names of the sources.)

I also have to take Step 3 during this year, would be great if I could kill 2 birds with 1 stone, how much overlap is there between these exams?

Thanks

Current intern here - not much overlap between ITE and step 3; I think a decent strategy is to knock step 3 out as soon as possible (in july / aug) and then you can start focusing on anesthesia stuff. however, depending on your intern year schedule, you might not have a ton of flexibility in when you can schedule step 3 since it's a 2day exam. step 3 is VERY much like step 2 CK, and you don't need to study all that much for it if you have done decently well on such exams in the past. for ITE as an intern, over the course of the year through Feb, I read first ~15 chapters of morgan & mikhail, did some m5 here and there, and started going through the open anesthesia keywords (didn't get far at all). given that you're starting from basically nothing, any type of reading / questions you do is likely to be relatively high yield, so just find what is the most convenient and/or interesting for you.
 
Does doing well on the ITE really matter as an Intern? When you haven't touched a vaporizer or given your own drugs yet even?

Honestly, as an intern, focus on being your patient's doctor. Anesthesiology will come in your pgy-2 year, but there's a lot of internal medicine that you should know beforehand to help solidify your foundation before you start anesthesiology. So far, I have not been impressed with most of the interns that I have met here at my fellowship hospital. But as for the ca-1s who did a separate intern year, I've noticed a difference.

Again. Anesthesiology should be the furthest thing from your mind as an intern. Learn medicine first, and then focus on the anesthesia towards the end of intern year. I strongly believe that a good intern year is a major factor (not the only one) that truly differentiates a general anesthesiologist from a nurse anesthetist.
 
I'm about to start my PGY1 year and my program has notified me that they will be signing us up for this ITE exam for February 2016.

I'm not going to start studying right now, but since this thread is up, I would like to take the opportunity to ask about the ITE.

I'm not the best at standardized exams so I would like to give myself a little extra time to study for these, I read some of the advice given by the posters here, but can anyone else please post what they feel like helped them and what was a waste of time for the most current ITE (also the actual names of the sources.)

I also have to take Step 3 during this year, would be great if I could kill 2 birds with 1 stone, how much overlap is there between these exams?

Thanks

Um not worth studying for ITE intern year. Your score does not matter. Read because you want to, not for the exam. Complete waste of time doing questions so from any source for ITE. No one will ever look at you intern year score and no one will even ask to see it.

Also, honestly ITE scores are not all that important for fellowship as this board makes them out to be (I bet as long as you are 50th percentile or higher CA2 year you wold be fine). I think in future they will be even less useful. All programs care about is that you can pass your boards. Given that you will have passed the first part of your boards by then, your ITE score importance will go down as they will know you can pass boards.
 
Um not worth studying for ITE intern year. Your score does not matter. Read because you want to, not for the exam. Complete waste of time doing questions so from any source for ITE. No one will ever look at you intern year score and no one will even ask to see it.

Also, honestly ITE scores are not all that important for fellowship as this board makes them out to be (I bet as long as you are 50th percentile or higher CA2 year you wold be fine). I think in future they will be even less useful. All programs care about is that you can pass your boards. Given that you will have passed the first part of your boards by then, your ITE score importance will go down as they will know you can pass boards.
All fellowships will ask to see "all" ITE scores when you apply. While it may not hurt you, it could really help you and if you take it seriously, it could set you up to do better on the CA1 exam just by the experience of taking the questions and studying seriously. If you happen to score >75th percentile on the exam as an intern, that is a great first impression as you are heading into the OR and interacting with the PD and other faculty. Their baseline impression of you will be very different than if you score in the single digit percentiles. As the saying goes, a first impression is a lasting impression.
I have seen interns score in the 30's, higher than many in the class ahead of them. This will get you noticed in a very positive way. It will get you invited to fellowship interviews that you would not have otherwise gotten.
So, it is true that a low score as an intern can be overlooked and written off as unimportant. But a really good score can have a powerful impact on how you are perceived in the department and can change the trajectory of how you are treated in the residency (whether fair or not) and what your letters of recommendation will look like. It can also affect whether or not you decide to spend $600-1000 on a review course for the ABA Basic exam. If you have two solid ITE scores, you can assume you are on the right path and don't need the extra help. In addition, I can tell you that others ARE taking it seriously so the scores are going way up. If you don't study, your percentile will likely be low. Right around 20 is now the mean. That is very different than in years past.
So, consider the above poster's advice very carefully.
 
All fellowships will ask to see "all" ITE scores when you apply. While it may not hurt you, it could really help you and if you take it seriously, it could set you up to do better on the CA1 exam just by the experience of taking the questions and studying seriously. If you happen to score >75th percentile on the exam as an intern, that is a great first impression as you are heading into the OR and interacting with the PD and other faculty. Their baseline impression of you will be very different than if you score in the single digit percentiles. As the saying goes, a first impression is a lasting impression.
I have seen interns score in the 30's, higher than many in the class ahead of them. This will get you noticed in a very positive way. It will get you invited to fellowship interviews that you would not have otherwise gotten.
So, it is true that a low score as an intern can be overlooked and written off as unimportant. But a really good score can have a powerful impact on how you are perceived in the department and can change the trajectory of how you are treated in the residency (whether fair or not) and what your letters of recommendation will look like. It can also affect whether or not you decide to spend $600-1000 on a review course for the ABA Basic exam. If you have two solid ITE scores, you can assume you are on the right path and don't need the extra help. In addition, I can tell you that others ARE taking it seriously so the scores are going way up. If you don't study, your percentile will likely be low. Right around 20 is now the mean. That is very different than in years past.
So, consider the above poster's advice very carefully.

Once again disagree. I am not saying don't take it seriously. Not one program asked for intern year ITE score and I did not send it to anyone either. Applied to over 10 pain programs and got interviews at all but one program. Not a single program was even asking about it during interviews.
Like I said, I would read and study, but not for the exam during intern year. I would take it seriously CA1-CA3 years, but lets not make it seem like this end all to be competitive especially as an intern.
 
Once again disagree. I am not saying don't take it seriously. Not one program asked for intern year ITE score and I did not send it to anyone either. Applied to over 10 pain programs and got interviews at all but one program. Not a single program was even asking about it during interviews.
Like I said, I would read and study, but not for the exam during intern year. I would take it seriously CA1-CA3 years, but lets not make it seem like this end all to be competitive especially as an intern.
Congrats on the interviews.
 
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Thanks for everyone's feedback, I appreciate it.
 
Hello friends,
I am CA 1 who is studying for Basic exam . I am looking for study partner ( Anesthesiology resident). please email me if you are interested. my email address. [email protected]
 
Anyone else feel like we deserve more advice from the guy who got a 50? He's keeping all the secrets for himself! I feel like you can't just drop a bomb like that then walk away
 
Anyone else feel like we deserve more advice from the guy who got a 50? He's keeping all the secrets for himself! I feel like you can't just drop a bomb like that then walk away

a) It's SDN; take driveby score reports with a grain of salt. We're all brilliant, handsome (or beautiful), witty top performers.

b) The secrets are genetic smarts, nurtured work ethic, and IMO time spent reading and studying in an active (vs passive) manner.

If there's any bit of a secret involved, it's that people who smoke these exams tend to have multimodal, active study methods. I think most people who put in the time but don't do well are simply passively reading and hoping it'll stick. For some people it does. For them, it probably did work through college and even med school, else they wouldn't be here still studying that way and expecting results. They're not dumb. What I tell them is that since what they're doing isn't working any more, they should try fundamentally realigning their study time for a few months. Set aside an hour and read a topic or part of a chapter from a primary source, for no more than about 15 minutes, then do a handful of board type questions on that material, and then (this is the hard and time-consuming part) spend the rest of the time writing explanations why the right answers were right and the wrong ones were wrong, whether you answered it correctly or not. For me this typically involved going back to the primary text, often related sections that I hadn't just read, and pulling a concise explanation out of there and putting it in my own words.

(This, by the way, creates an amazing review tool for yourself, because you can do those questions over again a year later, and you'll have your own explanation staring back at you when you miss the question again.)

I think an hour doing that a few times per week is better spent than 10 hrs/week just reading.

But ask 3 more people and you'll get 3 more answers.
 
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a) It's SDN; take driveby score reports with a grain of salt. We're all brilliant, handsome (or beautiful), witty top performers.

b) The secrets are genetic smarts, nurtured work ethic, and IMO time spent reading and studying in an active (vs passive) manner.

If there's any bit of a secret involved, it's that people who smoke these exams tend to have multimodal, active study methods. I think most people who put in the time but don't do well are simply passively reading and hoping it'll stick. For some people it does. For them, it probably did work through college and even med school, else they wouldn't be here still studying that way and expecting results. They're not dumb. What I tell them is that since what they're doing isn't working any more, they should try fundamentally realigning their study time for a few months. Set aside an hour and read a topic or part of a chapter from a primary source, for no more than about 15 minutes, then do a handful of board type questions on that material, and then (this is the hard and time-consuming part) spend the rest of the time writing explanations why the right answers were right and the wrong ones were wrong, whether you answered it correctly or not. For me this typically involved going back to the primary text, often related sections that I hadn't just read, and pulling a concise explanation out of there and putting it in my own words.

(This, by the way, creates an amazing review tool for yourself, because you can do those questions over again a year later, and you'll have your own explanation staring back at you when you miss the question again.)

I think an hour doing that a few times per week is better spent than 10 hrs/week just reading.

But ask 3 more people and you'll get 3 more answers.

*slow clap*

I love everything you said. I was hoping for more information from the guy who got the 50 just in terms of what resources he used, what he found most helpful, etc. I was fortunate to perform well on this ITE I'm just trying to see if I can max this thing out next year as I know I have plenty of knowledge deficits but they are spotty and difficult to fill in.
 
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*slow clap*

I love everything you said. I was hoping for more information from the guy who got the 50 just in terms of what resources he used, what he found most helpful, etc. I was fortunate to perform well on this ITE (47/99 CA-1), I'm just trying to see if I can max this thing out next year as I know I have plenty of knowledge deficits but they are spotty and difficult to fill in.

Keep studying and don't be disheartened. You'll be fine. Chin up!
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