ABPath MOC exam..Do your residency/fellowship program directors get information on whether you pass?

[univlad]

Does the residency/fellowship program director from where one trains get reports about how each former resident and fellow did on the MOC exam? I am considering taking it in August.

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[2121115]

Why would you care?

 

[Torsed]

Doubtful. I wouldn't give a hoot. I heard the first round of MOC takers had a 100 percent pass rate.

 

[univlad]

Any comments on this round of Pathology MOC Exam held last week?

 

[oldfatman]

It reminded me of the rise. I only took the AP/CP. The subspecialty takers left the room in a cold sweat.

 

[yaah]

Mixed feelings. I felt that the more "specialized" modules (I took GU and heme) were fair. A couple of harder or confusing questions but in the context of 25 that is ok I guess. My big issue is with the "general" modules. Instead of asking a lot of basic questions about things, it seemed to somewhat randomly pick some challenging or confusing questions out of pretty strongly specialized areas. While the ABP gave you a list of the question topics beforehand, some of them are ridiculously vague (like "breast cancer" or "malnutrition"). And then it puts questions on there that are more the perview of subspecialized pathologists (like non-standard questions on breast or GI path, and a difficult skin lesion). As an example, the general module had three GU questions on it. All 3 of them were harder than anything on the GU module. And of those three, one was basically asking for a "diagnosis" but most of the answer options were not actually diagnoses. And another was a horribly blurry image. I am not sure how they are picking these questions, but I get the sense they are asking specialists to write lots of questions, then asking them to rank them, and picking out the ones that the specialists say are OK for a general exam. In some cases that worked, but in others it's just really random. You can't put a topic like "breast cancer" on there and then provide questions that are basically pulling one sentence out of a random spot in the middle of the WHO book on epidemiology. Do they realize that generalists don't really ever see pap smears? Don't you think that if you're asking a generalist about a pap smear it should be something that is common knowledge?

So I was pretty disappointed. I suspect I passed but it was far from the "straightforward exam" that they were promising. Like I said, the more specialized modules that you can choose from were much more representative of daily practice.

 

[univlad]

I've heard rumors that the board is running a pilot exam from your home or work computers this autumn. Has anyone registered for it? How will it work? The thought of not having to fly to Tampa may make me delay taking it longer if that is a possibility.

 

[2121115]

Internal med docs are revolting against the ABIM MOC requirements right now, as I am sure many of you know. We in pathology should consider doing the same. There is NO evidence that MOC improves patient care. None. Zero. All it does is cost $$ and time out of our pockets.