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The ABA is a joke.
Im sure I passed. But what a worthless exam
That is all
Im sure I passed. But what a worthless exam
That is all
🙂I never realized that hyperbaric therapy or obscure landmark based blocks were such cornerstones of modern anesthesia practice...
🙂
90% of you passed. There are always some WTF questions on that exam, and the oral too for that matter. The weird stuff sticks in the head.
If you were doing fine on your ITEs, and you didn't blow off prep for this exam, and you didn't have a fever of 103 on test day ... just have a beer and celebrate. Your odds are good.
There are always some WTF questions on that exam, and the oral too for that matter. The weird stuff sticks in the head.
🙂
90% of you passed. There are always some WTF questions on that exam, and the oral too for that matter. The weird stuff sticks in the head.
If you were doing fine on your ITEs, and you didn't blow off prep for this exam, and you didn't have a fever of 103 on test day ... just have a beer and celebrate. Your odds are good.
See I just don't agree with this at all. The ITE for instance, there are always a fair amount of WTF questions on there. However, there are also a decent amount of doable questions one might see in say "Miller" or "M&M". If I took the ITE today I'd have scored in the 80th percentile, at worst the 70th.
It's a slap in the face to be extremely well prepared on the fundamentals of your specialty and get tested over none of it. I don't know what the ABA is trying to accomplish with the crapshoot exams. It's not making anyone a better anesthesiologist. Furthermore, it's going to discourage people from choosing anesthesia as a specialty. Med students are already put off by the fact we have to take the basic.
We need as many board certified anesthesiologist as possible given the climate of our specialty.
Just seems like a money grab.
Concur with all of the above. I guess I forgot to study what fire extinguisher to use in case an ultrasound machine catches on fire, or which poison gas causes the most pulmonary edema. My problem was definitely that I studied way too much practical clinical anesthesia material.
Wrong!We need as many board certified anesthesiologist as possible given the climate of our specialty.
Have you read it? You'd be surprised how comprehensive it is.Furthermore, aren't they supposed to follow their content outline?
Did you take your Basic exam, or was that your twin? 😛I had 0 questions on anesthesia gases. None. We use gases for 95%+ of cases and yet the ABA doesn't feel like they are important. I had 1-2 questions on induction drugs and 2 on pain meds (and even those were peripheral and not direct questions). I didn't get a single difficult airway question, only 1 TEE question but like ketamine said, there were multiple questions on toxic substances (mustard gas, ricin, sarin etc). The test is a joke and the ABA should be ashamed of themselves for taking my money and putting that product forward.
Wrong!
We need as many GOOD anesthesiologists as possible. Board certification should not be just a rubber stamp.
For those who complain about "esoteric" questions, guess what? That's exactly what one pays for when they ask for a doctor, not a CRNA. It doesn't take an anesthesiology residency to know the routine crap. Monkey see monkey do, remember? The CRNAs know that crap after a while, too (plus they have some form of schooling for 2 years). The difference is in those details, because in anesthesiology one cannot foresee when the answer to the esoteric question will becomes part of a "you have 2 minutes to fix the patient before he's harmed" problem.
All of you complainers, you ain't seen the CCM board questions. Answering those feels like ****ting bricks. That's exactly how a board exam should be. I don't think I will ever score close to 90% on that exam, even after decades of experience. It's just humbling. When one gets board-certified even after that, one never forgets how little one knows, and one continues to seek wisdom and knowledge.
Exactly. All of the "esoteric" stuff is somewhere in the 1500 + pages of Barash or M and M, but how much of it is relevant to the usual practice of anesthesia?Instead of writing some longer stemmed questions that emphasize clinical reasoning they just write one line "factoid" questions. Either you know it or you don't.I don't have a problem that the ABA put in 'esoteric' questions into their board exam, my issue is the amount of said questions. I get it, they need to make questions that are different levels of difficultly to stratify test takers and weed out the bottom few. But it's just pure laziness of the ABA to accomplish this goal by peppering the board exam with (IMO) an excessive amount of the 'esoteric' questions. I'm sure they could write difficult, tertiary level questions related to anesthesia that we encounter in real life. But they don't, they're lazy. Their approach is to write 4 questions on hyberbaric oxygen, 2 questions on drowning, 2 questions on chemical warfare, etc. The test is only 200 questions long.
I think the other problem is that these exams are randomly generated from a large bank of questions. On my exam I had two question stems that were almost identical and both of the questions had identical answer choices. The answer was the same for both questions. I'm not complaining b/c it was an easy question, but again, the fact that the test is only 200 questions but I'm being asked about the same thing, in the same way, twice, is pretty damning of the lack of quality control of this exam.
Wrong!
We need as many GOOD anesthesiologists as possible. Board certification should not be just a rubber stamp.
For those who complain about "esoteric" questions, guess what? That's exactly what one pays for when they ask for a doctor, not a CRNA. It doesn't take an anesthesiology residency to know the routine crap. Monkey see monkey do, remember? The CRNAs know that crap after a while, too (plus they have had some form of schooling in anesthesiology for 2 years, too). The difference is in those details, because in anesthesiology one cannot foresee when the answer to the esoteric question will become part of a "you have 2 minutes to fix the patient before he's harmed" problem.
All of you complainers, you ain't seen the CCM board questions. Answering those feels like ****ting bricks. That's exactly how a board exam should be. I don't think I will ever score close to 90% on that exam, even after decades of experience. It's just humbling. When one gets board-certified even after that, one never forgets how little one knows, and one continues to seek wisdom and knowledge.
Have you read it? You'd be surprised how comprehensive it is.
Many people make the mistake of just reading some board-prep and other favorite book(s), instead of covering the content outline, line by line. Then they are surprised when the exam contains stuff that was not included in Morgan and Mikhail, Truelearn or whatever material they had used.
Yep, I am totally irrelevant. Thank God you and the pass machine are not.How old are you? You haven't taken boards in decades probably so your opinion is irrelevant. The pass machine follows the content outline line by line genius
Nope. It's the residency programs and the oral boards that are supposed to weed out the idiots, the clinically incompetent. The written board exam is supposed to weed out those who are too lazy to read up beyond the daily routine practice requirements (aka the CRNA level). And still the system doesn't work; everybody becomes board-certified, sooner or later, in this country.You're clearly misguided. You think BS unrelated esoteric questions make a good anesthesiologist? You're full of @&$&. Knowing the MOA of mustard gas is making me better? Give me a break. If they're trying to weed someone like me out they're doing the specialty an injustice. I have done well academically and studied for over 6 months to take the exam. (In excess of what I already did in residency). It does not even come close to testing the true aspects of the specialty.
Board certification is pretty much a requirement to maintain credentialing at a hospital. Therefore the ABA needs pretty much everyone to be board certified. If board certification became so difficult that a sizable portion of anesthesiologists were not able to be certified there would be a huge shortage of docs leading hospitals to do away with board certification as necessary for credentialing leading to markedly less revenue for the ABANope. It's the residency programs and the oral boards that are supposed to weed out the idiots, the clinically incompetent. The written board exam is supposed to weed out those who are too lazy to read up beyond the daily routine practice requirements (aka the CRNA level). And still the system doesn't work; everybody and their janitor becomes board-certified, sooner or later, in this country.
I am sure that there were a number of stupid, useless and/or esoteric questions. I am also sure that most of them were not, regardless how they seem after 3 years of residency. The problem with our board certification system is that it's still a joke compared to the UK or ANZCA, because of the MCQs. Just take a look at the amount of knowledge that is required for their exams. It's still way too easy to become board-certified in this country; that's why 95+% of the graduates are, after 5 years from graduation.
And that's where the problem is with board-certification in this country. Quantity, not quality. That has never been the way to excellence.Board certification is pretty much a requirement to maintain credentialing at a hospital. Therefore the ABA needs pretty much everyone to be board certified. If board certification became so difficult that a sizable portion of anesthesiologists were not able to be certified there would be a huge shortage of docs leading hospitals to do away with board certification as necessary for credentialing leading to markedly less revenue for the ABA
Maybe. But in this specialty common sense, quick thinking, and lack of stupidity go a long way in avoiding bad outcomes. The esoteric stuff, not so much. FWIW the guy in my residency program who scored in the top 10 percent on the basic and crushes the ITE, I wouldn't let him anesthetise my dog ...And that's where the problem is with board-certification in this country. Quantity, not quality. That has never been the way to excellence.
That's why I applaud when they at least try to make people sweat for that title. There is an increasing tech-type mentality in the specialty, if not the entire profession; people only want to learn what they use in their everyday routine practice. Guess what? That's not what being a doctor is about, in most of the world. The term "doctor" comes from expert, authority on a subject, teacher, adviser. The routine stuff? That's something even a "DNP" should/will be able to do.
I don't have a problem that the ABA put in 'esoteric' questions into their board exam, my issue is the amount of said questions. I get it, they need to make questions that are different levels of difficultly to stratify test takers and weed out the bottom few. But it's just pure laziness of the ABA to accomplish this goal by peppering the board exam with (IMO) an excessive amount of the 'esoteric' questions. I'm sure they could write difficult, tertiary level questions related to anesthesia that we encounter in real life. But they don't, they're lazy. Their approach is to write 4 questions on hyberbaric oxygen, 2 questions on drowning, 2 questions on chemical warfare, etc. The test is only 200 questions long.
I think the other problem is that these exams are randomly generated from a large bank of questions. On my exam I had two question stems that were almost identical and both of the questions had identical answer choices. The answer was the same for both questions. I'm not complaining b/c it was an easy question, but again, the fact that the test is only 200 questions but I'm being asked about the same thing, in the same way, twice, is pretty damning of the lack of quality control of this exam.
+1. Unfortunately, if the knowledge is not far from a CRNA's, what's the difference? What does "doctor" stand for? What does one build the clinical expertise on?Maybe. But in this specialty common sense, quick thinking, and lack of stupidity go a long way in avoiding bad outcomes. The esoteric stuff, not so much. FWIW the guy in my residency program who scored in the top 10 percent on the basic and crushes the ITE, I wouldn't let him anesthetise my dog ...
FFP you're a pompous ass.
+1.FFP you're a pompous ass.
Sounds like I am in for a real treat in a year! Sorry to hear it was such a frustrating experience for so many. I'm on deck to take it next year, good to know that all I need to do is know everything about everything, anesthesia and otherwise.
I think FFP sees people complaining about an exam and thinks we're exaggerating the amount of dumb questions and whining because it was hard, since that happens all the time.
I agree, this exam felt different - lazier, stupider, etc than other exams I've taken before. If he had taken it, I really think he would've been disgusted how little critical thinking and detailed knowledge of anesthetic practice was useful in answering the questions