Study materials for Forensic Board Exam

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zihuatanejo

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For those of you who have already taken the forensic psychiatry board exam or are scheduled to take it later this year, what study materials do you recommend? I'm using the AAPL forensic psychiatry review course, which is more than 1000 pages long. However, I was looking for something that is more concise or high yield than that. Do you actually need to remember all of the different cases by name or is there particular emphasis on certain cases or caselaw?
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I wasn't expecting many replies to my initial post given that only 7% of psychiatry residents end up doing forensic fellowships. However, I was hoping to at least get one response to my initial query. I'm sure that other persons studying for the upcoming forensic boards would be interested in and could benefit from any guidance regarding study materials for the forensic board exam.
 
According to the 2011 census data from the APA, there were 4946 psychiatry residents and 70 forensic psychiatry fellows. So roughly 2.8% of psychiatry residents end up in forensic fellowships. So folks are only about a third as unhelpful as you're thinking...

Good luck with the resources question, though. I'd be curious myself... Did you ask your program what previous fellows have done?
 
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The 4946 psychiatry residents includes all years of training. So you still have about 1200-1300 per each PGY year. So 70 divided by 1200-1300 multiplied by 100 comes out to 5.4% to 5.8% of psychiatry residents doing forensic psychiatry fellowships.

I did speak with previous fellows at my program. One former fellow suggested the FOCUS book on forensic psychiatry. I couldn't find that book on the psychiatryonline website. Others suggested the AAPL forensic psychiatry review course or the textbook by Richard Rosner. However, both of those resources are close to 1,000 pages and it is not realistic to review both in a reasonable amount of time. I was hoping to find a more high-yield or concise review book that could supplement one of the more comprehensive resources such as the two mentioned above.
 
zihuatanejo said:
The 4946 psychiatry residents includes all years of training. So you still have about 1200-1300 per each PGY year. So 70 divided by 1200-1300 multiplied by 100 comes out to 5.4% to 5.8% of psychiatry residents doing forensic psychiatry fellowships.
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My bad. I'm in CAP mode and used 35 for a two year fellowship.
 
The AAPL review course is great. I attended in my fellowship and then reviewed the materials to prepare for the board. I also bought "Study Guide to Forensic Psychiatry, A Companion to the American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Forensic Psychiatry" which is a question book. It's a 2006 publication so perhaps a bit outdated (though only in terms of recent law; the concepts are still important.)
 
The AAPL course has several questions in it.

Yeah, I know it's not concise. I've been trying to just sum it up in a few notes on the cover page of each title because it's an exercise in futility to go through each page by page by page.

I'm taking the board exam myself this October. A problem here is unlike the USMLE there's not a huge market for a publisher to make test questions. I do hear, however, that the exam isn't that hard with a pass rate of over 90%. That said, I haven't taken it myself and you always hear some putz telling you an exam wasn't that bad and it really was bad and then when you confront them, they give you some answer like "oh yeah, it was bad. My bad...."
 
whopper said:
The AAPL course has several questions in it.

Yeah, I know it's not concise. I've been trying to just sum it up in a few notes on the cover page of each title because it's an exercise in futility to go through each page by page by page.

I'm taking the board exam myself this October. A problem here is unlike the USMLE there's not a huge market for a publisher to make test questions. I do hear, however, that the exam isn't that hard with a pass rate of over 90%. That said, I haven't taken it myself and you always hear some putz telling you an exam wasn't that bad and it really was bad and then when you confront them, they give you some answer like "oh yeah, it was bad. My bad...."
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For what it's worth, I've also heard that the exam isn't that hard. This is coming from young attendings in my current forensic fellowship who have taken it relatively recently.
 
Yeah, I've heard it from enough people to make me think it's not that tough.

But then again losing about $2.5 K (the exam fee) would not be nice, nor going back to work in my outpatient office where my next door neighbor is one of the nation's top forensic psychiatrists, and you know he'll ask me, "So James, how was the exam?"

I sure as heck don't want to tell him I failed it.
 
I also bought "Study Guide to Forensic Psychiatry, A Companion to the American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Forensic Psychiatry" which is a question book. It's a 2006 publication so perhaps a bit outdated (though only in terms of recent law; the concepts are still important.)
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I got the book and finished all the questions.

First, I bet the ABPN uses the same textbook that this book used the material for questions because it's an APPI publication and that's owned by the APA. It hardly gets more official than that.

The questions were well-written in a grammatical and information-digesting format.

Here's the main problem: Several of the questions are wrong even though I'd bet they used the information from the textbook correctly.

Here's what I'm talking about.

One question asks about the HCR-20, if it's an actuarial tool. It's not. The answer key says it is. It's not an actuarial tool. I know. I talked to the damn guy who made it. His entire point with the HCR-20 and why it's better than an actuarial tool is because it combines elements of clinical observation, judgment, what's going to happen in the near future with actuarial data. It's really a combined evaluation tool. and combined data shows better results and that's the entire freaking reason why he made the exam and didn't want to use existing actuarial tools. In the AAPL review course, Resnick says it's not an actuarial tool either.

So what's the right answer? The APPI textbook says it's actuarial, the author of the test says it's not, AAPL says it isn't. It does have a history section on it is that is actuarial so one could say it is one or it isn't one based completely on the semantics.

This is the same exact crap I couldn't stand about being a medstudent or taking the USMLEs. I'd know the REAL right answer but still get the answer wrong on the test. Now being a professor, I see several professors making stupid questions and putting very little thought process into it, and when the students get the question wrong when in fact they knew the stuff, they don't seem to care.

That's just one example. There's other questions where the way AAPL teaches it that is in contradiction with the way the APPI textbook explains it. If I had to pick one over the other, I'm going with AAPL cause they update their material every year, but this is sure as heck one thing I don't like cause I bet the people who made the forensic board exam are using the APPI textbook as their main source.

At least the majority of the questions are right, and some of then are outdated so they were right at one time.

As for me, I'm studying for the exam but not crazy-doing it. I'm going to work, going home, spending time with the wife and kids and spending about 2 hours a night studying for this thing. I'm to the point where I've already recycled through the notes 3+ times and did about 75% of the AAPL questions, and will likely finish all of them by the end of the week. Everything I'm getting wrong in the questions are stuff where the questions ask you something not in the notes or lecture or like this APPI book, I know what's going on but getting the question wrong anyway. I figure based on that I'm likely going to pass.
 
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Good luck to everyone taking it - it's coming up soon!
 
Okay, just took the exam today. Here's what I can tell you.

1) All the questions were straight-forward, being 1-3 sentences, with no odd question formats where you get the question wrong even if you knew the material.

E.g. no questions like the ones Resnick put in the AAPL review course that could be curve balls such as...
A) Items 1 is correct
B) Items 1 and 2 are correct
C) Items 1, 3 are correct
D) All of the above

2) About 20% of the questions of the exam was from material I never saw in the AAPL review course, and I had that material solidly memorized. In the end of the AAPL review course, there's a section on what's supposed to be on the exam and I didn't see that material in there either.

Just to give you an example, I am considered a nationally recognized expert on psychological autopsies. I gave a lecture on it at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences convention and get notifications from them from time to time to add input to their knowledge of the state of the art on the topic. So guess what? I think I got those questions correct on the exam, but it's not in the AAPL review course, and some of those questions weren't ones you'd be able to figure out unless you knew the material.

3) About another 20% of the questions were based on material I saw in the AAPL course, but you had to think through it and the simple fact that you had the material memorized wasn't good enough. I think even if people had these parts memorized they could still get the question wrong.

E.g., there were plenty of -what do you do next?- questions. The AAPL Review Course material never told you what to do next. It just told you what are some things you could do but never prioritized them or told you what to do next.

4) About 10% of the questions were in the AAPL review course binder but were not detailed in the notes or lectures. They were in the appendix sections.

5) About 2/3 of the exam was solidly in the review notes, and I heard the audio content about 5x over the course of months during my drive to and from work. When Dr. Scott or Resnick said to memorize something, memorize it. Most of their cogent points were in the exam. Pinals and Gutheil, while presenting good lectures, didn't point out specifics to memorize for the exam as obviously as the other lecturers.

6) There were law cases on the exam that weren't AAPL landmark cases. Yes, there weren't that many but there still were non-landmark cases.

4) The law cases, have the story and court reasoning understood and memorized. It's not good enough to know that M'Naughten was the insanity case because there were many insanity cases with differing standards, and the test will put down those other tests and other answer choices. This is true for all the cases. You need to know the legal/constitutional reasoning, the court involved (DC Court of Appeals? Supreme Court of the US?)

Now to answer some questions I hear from other people....
1) The exam was not easy. I heard from several it's a cakewalk. No it's not. I can't call an exam a cake-walk when a significant portion of it is material never taught in fellowship or the AAPL review course leaving me thinking WTF? It was, however straight-forward.

2) I do think most people will pass it despite what I mentioned. Resnick mentioned the pass rate is very high. So unless this year's exam was significantly more difficult (and I can't tell because I never took this exam before), and perhaps this is a new trend, I do think you'll pass so long as you study for it.

Now to add something that many people might not like, I actually do believe they may trend to make the exam more difficult. Board certification in forensic psychiatry used to not need a fellowship, only had to take a test, and very few people took it with only a few hundred total in the country. Now there are hundreds of fellows a year graduating. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they intentionally made the exam more difficult with the expectation that less people will pass.

Now I don't know if this will help any of you, but the last two days before the exam, I lightly studied and didn't work hard. This was the right thing to do. All of the material in the AAPL Review Course I knew it solidly on the test. It's the stuff not in the review course where I needed to critically think. Going over that material even more wouldn't have helped me. It wasn't lack of knowing the material that was my enemy. I needed the two days to take it easy to rest my brain so I could walk in there fresh.
 
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The in-laws are over cause the wife is going to present at a national conference and will be flying off to another state, so I will be taking it easy, but not partying.

Besides, when you're 40, and married, partying ain't as fun.

I have been playing Star Trek online for the past few weeks. Maybe a beer or two, hanging with the in-laws, eating good food, hitting the gym, and blowing up some spaceships will have to do for now. (Hey anyone here play that? I need some people to join my fleet!)
 
Monday morning quarter-backing.

I passed the exam.

I'm glad I posted above because that was when the exam was fresh in my head. Just some final thoughts....

A lot of the material on the exam is not covered in the AAPL review course. The course is still recommended but walk into the exam expecting to get a few below the belt hits and curve-balls. It's not because the question formats are difficult, it's because you'll see stuff on the exam where you had no warning this stuff would be on there. I'd specifically mention what I remember that was not in the review course but I believe I might be violating some agreements you have to sign ahead of taking the test such as not revealing very specific content.

There were test questions on non-landmark AAPL cases. That said, they are low-yield but be prepared to think "WTF!!?!?!?!?" during the exam. Bear in mind that AAPL does not make this test. I don't know how much effort the review course teachers take in trying to teach material specifically on the exam. Many of you may have used USMLE-WORLD for the USMLE because you found the questions very similar in style, grammar and content. When you took USMLE, having done USMLE WORLD, you likely felt prepared and the exam was not foreign. The AAPL review course, while good, it's test questions do not mimic that of the exam. It's like taking professor X's course, but having to take professor Y's exam. We all know that different authors could make test questions very very different.

The ABPN published guidelines on what material will be on the exam. I saw test questions outside of those guidelines. Were these experimental questions? I don't know. If they weren't, I would say that was highly unethical and unfair to test someone on something they had no warning on. Again, be prepared for zingers.

I cannot recommend a specific textbook or source that will be almost perfect for this exam. I could do so for the general psych exam, but not this one. The best guide is the AAPL review course, but as mentioned, a lot of material on the exam isn't in the review course, the practice questions in the manual are very different in style, and some of the authors don't focus on getting you into the right mindset for the exam. Just as an example, there are several Latin terms you will be asked about, and there is no definitive guide of what terms to memorize. The AAPL course only showed a few. I saw several on the exam where I never saw these terms before. Being that I never saw a guideline of the highest yield terms and memorizing an entire legal dictionary for what would only be a few questions is not worth it--that's what I'm talking about.

From what I understand the pass rate is high. If this is the case, then they must pass people with fairly low scores because of the number of questions on this exam where one will say to himself "how the heck was I supposed to know this? It's not in the AAPL course, it's not in the forensic psych textbook, and it's not in the guidelines of what to know for the exam." As long as you studied for it well, when you experience the exam, don't let that destroy your morale.

I certainly over-studied. I had that AAPL review course memorized inside out and was frustrated to see so many questions not in the review course material but nonetheless it gave me the mental comfort of believing I passed the exam cause I thought to myself "if it's not in the AAPL review course, no other person would be able to get these right more so than I."

To give an example of something on the exam (without specifically mentioning what it was), that's not in the review course, there is a syndrome that is not taught in the review course, or in any psychiatric residency program I know of, it's not in any editions of the DSM, and it was on the exam in multiple questions. I never heard of it before walking into the exam. It's not in the ABPN guidelines of what to study. I think I had about 5 questions on that syndrome. I of course looked it up after the exam, asked several colleagues, some of whom are national experts, and none of them ever heard of it either.
 
whopper said:
Monday morning quarter-backing.

I passed the exam.

I'm glad I posted above because that was when the exam was fresh in my head. Just some final thoughts....

A lot of the material on the exam is not covered in the AAPL review course. The course is still recommended but walk into the exam expecting to get a few below the belt hits and curve-balls. It's not because the question formats are difficult, it's because you'll see stuff on the exam where you had no warning this stuff would be on there. I'd specifically mention what I remember that was not in the review course but I believe I might be violating some agreements you have to sign ahead of taking the test such as not revealing very specific content.

There were test questions on non-landmark AAPL cases. That said, they are low-yield but be prepared to think "WTF!!?!?!?!?" during the exam. Bear in mind that AAPL does not make this test. I don't know how much effort the review course teachers take in trying to teach material specifically on the exam. Many of you may have used USMLE-WORLD for the USMLE because you found the questions very similar in style, grammar and content. When you took USMLE, having done USMLE WORLD, you likely felt prepared and the exam was not foreign. The AAPL review course, while good, it's test questions do not mimic that of the exam. It's like taking professor X's course, but having to take professor Y's exam. We all know that different authors could make test questions very very different.

The ABPN published guidelines on what material will be on the exam. I saw test questions outside of those guidelines. Were these experimental questions? I don't know. If they weren't, I would say that was highly unethical and unfair to test someone on something they had no warning on. Again, be prepared for zingers.

I cannot recommend a specific textbook or source that will be almost perfect for this exam. I could do so for the general psych exam, but not this one. The best guide is the AAPL review course, but as mentioned, a lot of material on the exam isn't in the review course, the practice questions in the manual are very different in style, and some of the authors don't focus on getting you into the right mindset for the exam. Just as an example, there are several Latin terms you will be asked about, and there is no definitive guide of what terms to memorize. The AAPL course only showed a few. I saw several on the exam where I never saw these terms before. Being that I never saw a guideline of the highest yield terms and memorizing an entire legal dictionary for what would only be a few questions is not worth it--that's what I'm talking about.

From what I understand the pass rate is high. If this is the case, then they must pass people with fairly low scores because of the number of questions on this exam where one will say to himself "how the heck was I supposed to know this? It's not in the AAPL course, it's not in the forensic psych textbook, and it's not in the guidelines of what to know for the exam." As long as you studied for it well, when you experience the exam, don't let that destroy your morale.

I certainly over-studied. I had that AAPL review course memorized inside out and was frustrated to see so many questions not in the review course material but nonetheless it gave me the mental comfort of believing I passed the exam cause I thought to myself "if it's not in the AAPL review course, no other person would be able to get these right more so than I."

To give an example of something on the exam (without specifically mentioning what it was), that's not in the review course, there is a syndrome that is not taught in the review course, or in any psychiatric residency program I know of, it's not in any editions of the DSM, and it was on the exam in multiple questions. I never heard of it before walking into the exam. It's not in the ABPN guidelines of what to study. I think I had about 5 questions on that syndrome. I of course looked it up after the exam, asked several colleagues, some of whom are national experts, and none of them ever heard of it either.
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Congratulations! I always appreciate your insights, thanks for sharing. :)
 
Dear Whopper,
I am taking the Forensic Psychiatry Boards next month and woefully unprepared. I have AAPL course and those two books. Is there any way you can guide me and give me some tips? My email is [email protected]
Thanks
AJ
 
Do I need to remember all the landmark cases? I was told that there are very few questions like that but again, I get conflicting info from different sources. I have 2004 AAPL course, would that be OK? I figured that there won't be lot of questions for last 10 year changes! Please advice.
 
Actually exactly 32 days! Counting days!!! Trying to find time in my superbusy practice. It is here and there, or no where. Interestingly AAPL didn't have any refresher course around this exam.
 
Apologize for late posting but I passed! I got 91% questions right! I would say the mantra is landmark cases, Landmark Cases and AAPL Course. I think I overprepared in the short time I got. There are over 1000 questions there and they have lot of re-formatted questions from that course. I was feeling so stupid after I took the exam as it was unbelievably easy and I was all psyched up. Just take it cool and you will pass. I also bought some old editions of Forensic Psychiatric books
 
Anyone taking the boards next month? I am using the AAPL course (videos from 2012/ notes from 2011 - hope it hasn't changed much) and the APA study guide as well. I plan on doing all the questions. Which source do you think has the questions most like the real boards?

I also am using the Forensic Psychiatry: Essential Board Review by Dr. Farrell which just came out a few months ago. It seems to provide a quick recap of the landmarks and other material. I haven't done the questions yet but heard they are picky and not relevant.

I almost bought Landmark Cases in Forensic Psychiatry by Dr. Ford. However I think the Essential Board Review and the AAPL course does provide a decent landmark summary.

I was looking at some online sources for flashcards, landmark cram guides/tables, etc. Does anyone have any good links for a brief recap?
 
I know Dr. Farrell. She graduated from the fellowship I graduated from the year after I did. She's a heck of a nice person, a good psychiatrist and very bright. I don't know if the book is good but she's good.

As I mentioned before some board prep courses and books try to emulate the exam. I just don't mean they ask questions on the topic but they try to ask the same questions that were found to be high yield and ask questions in the most similar rhetorical style. As much as I like Dr. Farrell there's no way I could see her doing that unless they actually gave her access to the questions and I highly doubt that happened.

I see some questions above I can answer.
Did the AAPL review notes change much? No. I know someone who took the course over for his 10 year re-certification. He told me they were about 90% the same.

There are flashcards available. Forgot who made them but they were advertising them at AAPL. Maybe searching online might help. I just made them by hand because for me the process of writing the cases down helped me to memorize them.
 
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whopper said:
Okay, just took the exam today. Here's what I can tell you.

1) All the questions were straight-forward, being 1-3 sentences, with no odd question formats where you get the question wrong even if you knew the material.

E.g. no questions like the ones Resnick put in the AAPL review course that could be curve balls such as...
A) Items 1 is correct
B) Items 1 and 2 are correct
C) Items 1, 3 are correct
D) All of the above

2) About 20% of the questions of the exam was from material I never saw in the AAPL review course, and I had that material solidly memorized. In the end of the AAPL review course, there's a section on what's supposed to be on the exam and I didn't see that material in there either.

Just to give you an example, I am considered a nationally recognized expert on psychological autopsies. I gave a lecture on it at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences convention and get notifications from them from time to time to add input to their knowledge of the state of the art on the topic. So guess what? I think I got those questions correct on the exam, but it's not in the AAPL review course, and some of those questions weren't ones you'd be able to figure out unless you knew the material.

3) About another 20% of the questions were based on material I saw in the AAPL course, but you had to think through it and the simple fact that you had the material memorized wasn't good enough. I think even if people had these parts memorized they could still get the question wrong.

E.g., there were plenty of -what do you do next?- questions. The AAPL Review Course material never told you what to do next. It just told you what are some things you could do but never prioritized them or told you what to do next.

4) About 10% of the questions were in the AAPL review course binder but were not detailed in the notes or lectures. They were in the appendix sections.

5) About 2/3 of the exam was solidly in the review notes, and I heard the audio content about 5x over the course of months during my drive to and from work. When Dr. Scott or Resnick said to memorize something, memorize it. Most of their cogent points were in the exam. Pinals and Gutheil, while presenting good lectures, didn't point out specifics to memorize for the exam as obviously as the other lecturers.

6) There were law cases on the exam that weren't AAPL landmark cases. Yes, there weren't that many but there still were non-landmark cases.

4) The law cases, have the story and court reasoning understood and memorized. It's not good enough to know that M'Naughten was the insanity case because there were many insanity cases with differing standards, and the test will put down those other tests and other answer choices. This is true for all the cases. You need to know the legal/constitutional reasoning, the court involved (DC Court of Appeals? Supreme Court of the US?)

Now to answer some questions I hear from other people....
1) The exam was not easy. I heard from several it's a cakewalk. No it's not. I can't call an exam a cake-walk when a significant portion of it is material never taught in fellowship or the AAPL review course leaving me thinking WTF? It was, however straight-forward.

2) I do think most people will pass it despite what I mentioned. Resnick mentioned the pass rate is very high. So unless this year's exam was significantly more difficult (and I can't tell because I never took this exam before), and perhaps this is a new trend, I do think you'll pass so long as you study for it.

Now to add something that many people might not like, I actually do believe they may trend to make the exam more difficult. Board certification in forensic psychiatry used to not need a fellowship, only had to take a test, and very few people took it with only a few hundred total in the country. Now there are hundreds of fellows a year graduating. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they intentionally made the exam more difficult with the expectation that less people will pass.

Now I don't know if this will help any of you, but the last two days before the exam, I lightly studied and didn't work hard. This was the right thing to do. All of the material in the AAPL Review Course I knew it solidly on the test. It's the stuff not in the review course where I needed to critically think. Going over that material even more wouldn't have helped me. It wasn't lack of knowing the material that was my enemy. I needed the two days to take it easy to rest my brain so I could walk in there fresh.
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Whopper,

Thanks again for all your advice. I noted you mentioned many questions coming from the appendix part of the lecture notes. There are many appendix sections scattered throughout the notes. Some of the sections don't appear to be exam-worthy and more practical like "expert witness in psychiatric malpractice case" or even the pharmacotherapy of sexual offenders (which elicited flashbacks of studying OBG or Endocrinology). Just wondering of all the appendix sections are relevant for the boards.
 
I scored 81% on the test in the back of the AAPL review binder.....how do the questions here compare to the real deal?
 
anyone else do the AAPL review binder questions?
 
anyone taking the forensic boards this week?
 
Took the test last week. Harder than I anticipated. I did well on my Gen Cert last year, so I was surprised by the level of difficulty for this exam. Felt like AAPL review was not even close to enough. I knew the landmarks and the binder cold, but the questions seemed to go beyond the binder (not additional cases for me though). I did the same as about you on the review Txpsychdoc. It is a pretty high pass rate so I'm banking on that.
 
lot of questions outside of the AAPL reveiw. I thought the questions were more like the study guide companion than from the AAPL binder. lot of non-landmark questions. however I felt confident about most of the questions . remember we can get more than 1 out of 4 questions wrong and still pass and I felt I was unsure of about 1 in 5 questions. I am banking on the high pass rate as well.
 
Good luck! Would like to know how you guys did when you get the results back. I've been putting off the test...I'm a bit tired of taking exams after doing both general and child boards. But I really need to get this one out of the way.
 
I think it was less painful than the general boards. I believe the forensic boards are given only every 2 years. The live AAPL course is right after the boards...too early for the next boards. also I think with the live lectures you can only attend half of them as they give you a choice of two lectures per slot. it maybe better to do the cd and binder closer to the exam.

btw lot of errors in the Forensic Psychiatry: Essential Board Review. i think i may have learned a lot by correcting the errors. some are glaring and very obvious. (mixing up the 5th and 6 th amendments; saying one defendant was executed in a landmark case when he was not, etc). If i have the time and energy I may post them on the amazon review for the book. I think the land mark summaries in Ford's book is much better. In Essential Board Review the summaries are hit or miss and not focused on the meat of the matter. The main reason I got this was the non-landmark material which is sparse. In hindsight I would have got Ford's book instead and can no longer recommend Essential Board Review , at least the first edition. The most comprehensive summaries are in the binder. However you don't need to know all the minutiae of the landmarks for the exam.

I would recommend the AAPL course/binder with all the questions, the study guide companion questions (and maybe the book it is based on if you have time) and maybe Ford's book.
 
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Sorry I didn't respond sooner. I check the forum now about once every few days and only spend a few minutes. Years ago I used to spend hours a day on it.

Don't feel so bad if there were questions where you never heard of the information before. I was there. I asked some top ranked forensic psychiatrists about some of the stuff I saw and never heard of before and they never heard of it either.
 
TXpsydoc said:
I think it was less painful than the general boards. I believe the forensic boards are given only every 2 years. The live AAPL course is right after the boards...too early for the next boards. also I think with the live lectures you can only attend half of them as they give you a choice of two lectures per slot. it maybe better to do the cd and binder closer to the exam.

btw lot of errors in the Forensic Psychiatry: Essential Board Review. i think i may have learned a lot by correcting the errors. some are glaring and very obvious. (mixing up the 5th and 6 th amendments; saying one defendant was executed in a landmark case when he was not, etc). If i have the time and energy I may post them on the amazon review for the book. I think the land mark summaries in Ford's book is much better. In Essential Board Review the summaries are hit or miss and not focused on the meat of the matter. The main reason I got this was the non-landmark material which is sparse. In hindsight I would have got Ford's book instead and can no longer recommend Essential Board Review , at least the first edition. The most comprehensive summaries are in the binder. However you don't need to know all the minutiae of the landmarks for the exam.

I would recommend the AAPL course/binder with all the questions, the study guide companion questions (and maybe the book it is based on if you have time) and maybe Ford's book.
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That's helpful. Thanks for the info.
 
I think it was less painful than the general boards. I believe the forensic boards are given only every 2 years. The live AAPL course is right after the boards...too early for the next boards. also I think with the live lectures you can only attend half of them as they give you a choice of two lectures per slot. it maybe better to do the cd and binder closer to the exam.
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Agree.

I forgot the name of the forensic textbook, but IMHO the questions seemed straight out of that book and not the AAPL course. You will pass if you study the AAPL course notes but it's like taking a course with Dr X but you are forced to take the test written by Dr Y and the two docs didn't talk to each other. A lot of stuff in the exam wasn't emphasized in the AAPL notes, there's stuff in the exam not in the notes and AAPL keeps touting their landmark cases that they decided to be landmark cases and many of the cases in the exam aren't on the AAPL list of landmark cases.

Double checked. It's Rosner's forensic psych textbook. Don't spend your time studying it. It's too big to study, but yes the questions seemed straight out of there. That book has the cases that aren't AAPL landmark cases, it has the diagnosis of disorders that no one's heard of that's in the test, it's got to be out of that book.
 
I read the reviews of Dr. Farrell's book. Again I know her personally, she is a very good psychiatrist, and I haven't read her book. I'm not saying it's good or bad. I haven't read it, but some of the reviews I read wow. Many of them are by non-forensic psychiatrists giving her kudos and don't know a thing about the exam. People want a board review book for guess what? Board review? Why would a psychiatrist, a famous one, but a psychiatrist that doesn't know forensic psychiatry, hasn't taken the exam, and doesn't know what's in the exam be recommending it for board review?

This is a problem with knowing too much information.
 
Just wanted to point out that although most folks report the Forensic Board being a hard exam and lots of folks feeling humbled after it, the pass rate is still in the mid-90%s.
 
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