ABCN written exam advice

[psychddd]

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I’m hoping to pick everyone’s brain about the written exam, my questions are:
- Were there any practice tests you found actually representative of the type of questions on the actual exam?
- Was it an even mix of peds v adult?
- Any sections of the Stucky book you recommend focusing extra attention on?
- Is the Stucky book sufficient for neuroanatomy study, or is it best to also go through Bulemenfeld?
- Is there a greater focus on clinical syndromes and situations or neuroanatomy knowledge?

 

[szymk1sm]

I’m hoping to pick everyone’s brain about the written exam, my questions are:
- Were there any practice tests you found actually representative of the type of questions on the actual exam?
- Was it an even mix of peds v adult?
- Any sections of the Stucky book you recommend focusing extra attention on?
- Is the Stucky book sufficient for neuroanatomy study, or is it best to also go through Bulemenfeld?
- Is there a greater focus on clinical syndromes and situations or neuroanatomy knowledge?

I took the written exam in 2021 (I think), so things may have changed. I primarily used the Stucky 2 book for studying and supplemented with Blumenfeld, a Peds Neuropsych book, and the Little Black Book of NP. I think I had a few seminal articles too and supplemented with more recent multicultural and PVT articles. I also read through a lot of the position papers and took notes. I used practice tests from Stucky 1 and Stucky 2 and thought they were sufficient. I think I also reviewed old practice tests from the BRAIN website (they were in the process of updating the practice tests, but that wasn't done by the time I took the exam). I think you should focus on areas that you're weaker in (for me that was def peds and a few other areas that I can't recall off hand). Create mnemonics for patterns on testing and which disorders these are applicable to (this is what I did for some of the peds conditions that have non-verbal deficits). IIRC, my exam was adult heavy but there were def peds questions scattered throughout. I believe the focus on the exam these days is clinical syndromes vs. straight regurgitation of neuroanatomy facts, but you should brush up on your neuroanatomy to be able to answer questions about the clinical syndromes.

 

[jdawg2017]

I’m hoping to pick everyone’s brain about the written exam, my questions are:
- Were there any practice tests you found actually representative of the type of questions on the actual exam?
- Was it an even mix of peds v adult?
- Any sections of the Stucky book you recommend focusing extra attention on?
- Is the Stucky book sufficient for neuroanatomy study, or is it best to also go through Bulemenfeld?
- Is there a greater focus on clinical syndromes and situations or neuroanatomy knowledge?

Just took it this past cycle and comfortably passed on my first try. If you benefit from study groups normally, sign up for one with BRAIN. My group was awesome… I know people have varying experiences but we were all serious and had different expertise, so it was a good experience.

It sounds like they are piloting new forms this year that will be fully phased in moving forward. Here’s what I can share ethically:

1) The Stuckey board book (newest version) is still relevant. The exams in that book were helpful, as were BRAIN exams 4-6 IMO. Brain 1-3 are worth it for practice but are outdated. Also each brain exam had 1-2 errors on average, just as an FYI. My study group all got them wrong and flagged them for internal discussion since they were fairly obvious errors.

2) The base exam is a mix of various topics. I think adult people think there is too much peds and vice versa. Idk if there is a clear percentage on this but if you study Stuckey you’ll basic know what you need to know from both, more or less, plus stats, ethics, etc.

3) Everything in Stuckey is fair game. There is published guidance r.e. the rough split of how questions are distributed. As an adult focused provider, I spent more time bulking up on peds topics than adult stuff, but I still read the book cover to cover and took notes on all chapters.

4) Regarding neuroanatomy, I opened Blumenfeld a few times to review some specifics but this was already something I felt decently comfortable with at baseline so I truly didn’t use it that much. YMMV depending on your training in neuroanatomy. Some folks swear up and down about Blumenfeld.

5) The published split regarding the rough % of how questions are distributed is available online. I don’t remember them off the top of my head. You can’t really know clinical syndromes without the neuroanatomical basis, so it’s definitely worth studying both. I would recommend studying these together.