ABEM Exam today...

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TysonCook

TysonCook

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all I can say is Holy Cow😕 Was NOT what I expected....oh well...hopefully I'll scrape by and not have to retake...wtf?!?!
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TysonCook said:
all I can say is Holy Cow😕 Was NOT what I expected....oh well...hopefully I'll scrape by and not have to retake...wtf?!?!
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i second that sentiment. i was anxiously caculating how many i could miss and still pass during the break.

not much reasoning involved to answer the questions. alot of nit-picky questions. the problem for me was, i either knew it or DIDN'T know it. and it seemed like i DIDN'T know the answer to a hefty portion.
 
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I felt very similarly a year ago, but ended up doing just fine.

Try your best not to sweat it.
 
I think it's designed to make you think you failed it as you walk out.

You'll do fine. I recommend beer in the meantime. It makes the waiting much easier.

Take care,
Jeff
 
Nothing like paying beaucoups of money to have a test make you feel like a *****.

I like how the test was geared for clinical medicine that I practice everyday.

For those of you who were calculating--what is passing? 75?
 
TysonCook said:
all I can say is Holy Cow😕 Was NOT what I expected....oh well...hopefully I'll scrape by and not have to retake...wtf?!?!
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As one who has not done much preparation and is taking it tomorrow morning, this thread is not what I wanted to see...
 
While I agree that the test doesn't test most knowledge we use on a daily basis, I don't know how they could do it differently.

How can you make up a creative question about a sore throat, disposition of low-risk chest pain, abdominal pain, infectious disease, etc. that encompasses common answers without being blatantly obvious?

First, you have to take away the routine emergencies and common knowledge that is too boring to get tested on, or impossible to write a challenging question about.

Then, you've got to not delve into topics with which there are not perfect answers to, or at least are controversial enough to be impossible to write questions that won't get disputed.

What you are left with is tricky word plays, and esoteric knowledge that you only know because you thought you might be tested on it.
 
medivac said:
Nothing like paying beaucoups of money to have a test make you feel like a *****.

I like how the test was geared for clinical medicine that I practice everyday.

For those of you who were calculating--what is passing? 75?
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yes, 75% is the passing mark. this is somewhere in the package they send you with information on the test. it gets a little tricky calculating the number as each test has an unknown number or experimental questions that don't get counted toward your score.

did anyone find the test much different than the in-service exams? this test was a whole level deeper into details i felt.
 
Essentially agree with everything that's been said so far. I spent 5 minutes on 1 question, just trying to figure out what the wording meant. Sort of a sneaky exam. I had step I flashbacks walking out of the testing center: "mother f---." When all of the bad questions are discarded and the exam is curved (or whatever they do), I'm sure we passed. God speed to all!
 
Guys, I thought I would throw my "misery loves company" 2 cents in. I thought the In-service drew from the same question bank as the PEER VII questions. I dont think the ABEM questions mirrored the PEER questions nearly to the same degree. I walked in to the PEARSON Testing Center thinking to myself " hey, I went up 5-7 points on the In-service each year in residency and scored above an 80 as an R3...no sweat". I walked out thinking there was no way that I answered 3 out of every 4 questions correctly. I like the beer drinking advice. A Toast: "Here's to thinking that all of the WTF questions were experimental!" Anybody have a realistic idea of how soon the results will be mailed out?
 
I got nervous prior to the exam after reading this thread...but I didn't think the exam was that bad. I used several different review materials during my 3 years of residency and crammed with PEER 6 (which I'd completed in the past already) and 7, the AAEM review and questions, and a high yield sheet in the last week. I thought the exam was fair, a little more difficult than the last inservice but doable.
 
ditto what many others said, felt just like the steps where i walked out having no idea how i did. i keep reassuring myself that i felt the same after every step and got the same, well above average score each time. my residency buds all felt similarly... weird nitpicky questions.
 
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la gringa said:
ditto what many others said, felt just like the steps where i walked out having no idea how i did. i keep reassuring myself that i felt the same after every step and got the same, well above average score each time. my residency buds all felt similarly... weird nitpicky questions.
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I felt the same way!! In the past I have passed when I walked out feeling horrible, but you never know about this time....eeks! I freaked myself out when I counted the number of questions that I flagged!!
 
Is it curved or is it the 75% percent correct answers?
That thing was pretty ridiculous, not like the inservice at all. All this esoteric knowledge and tox questions...
The only positive thing was that the questions were prety short - in inservice it took me a minute just to read through the question. I felt like I failed the damn thing.
 
ZigZag said:
Is it curved or is it the 75% percent correct answers?
That thing was pretty ridiculous, not like the inservice at all. All this esoteric knowledge and tox questions...
The only positive thing was that the questions were prety short - in inservice it took me a minute just to read through the question. I felt like I failed the damn thing.
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passing is set at 75%. this is of course after they remove the experimental questions. even then, not sure how many experimental questions there are.

i guess everyone (with the exception of one poster) agrees that the exam was a complete ballbuster. so we all either failed or we all passed. i prefer to think we all passed and will look back at these posts a couple months from now taking a big sigh of relief.
 
Totally agree! Felt like the worst exam that I have ever taken! I still kind of feel like I wanna vomit! Had to be the most random questions that I have ever encountered on one exam. I am not sure that they knew I was supossed to be taking the exam for EMERGENCY medicine. Random facts about random animals are not emergencies people!!!!
 
Long time since I have posted but this exam prompted my wanting to express an opinion. I did really well on steps, inservices, and can safely say that this was one brutal son of a gun. I have never taken a harder exam. Every question seemed reasonable, but the choices were all like 7th order answers. When they threw something straightforward at you you almost felt like kissing the screen. So many esoteric topics. I swear it felt like I was taking the IM boards. Second half seemed easier than the first. Time is not an issue I don't think. My guess is after they throw out the pilot questions that the grades for all of us will be on par with inservice grades. That's why I am not willing to spend another second worrying. No big deal guys. Trust what got us all here, and the good news is that we can't all fail. Best of luck my friends.
 
No, there aren't a lot of resources, I guess do PEER VI and VII, possibly the flashcards, then at least you'll be average considering thats what almost all of us did...on this test average is going to be poor but at least passing 🙂
 
I'm a fan of using a lot of different resources, because I don't think I could ever rely on just PEER and also because that way I learned which resources I wanted to focus on before the real thing. Throughout residency I went through Rivers twice (very dry, but gave me a base). I also did the PAACEP questions at some point. I watched the video lectures on intrainingprep.com right before my 3rd yr inservice (very high yield but didn't think I needed to go through it again). Before the boards I read through some of the new AAEM board review book, which I like a lot better than Rivers, and did all of the questions in that. I used PEER 6 and 7 and did them multiple times because there is a lot of good info in the explanations. I used the high yield sheet that was posted here (do a search for bizz buzz) and read through it a few times during residency and the week before the test.
 
jaeida8 said:
I'm a fan of using a lot of different resources, because I don't think I could ever rely on just PEER and also because that way I learned which resources I wanted to focus on before the real thing. Throughout residency I went through Rivers twice (very dry, but gave me a base). I also did the PAACEP questions at some point. I watched the video lectures on intrainingprep.com right before my 3rd yr inservice (very high yield but didn't think I needed to go through it again). Before the boards I read through some of the new AAEM board review book, which I like a lot better than Rivers, and did all of the questions in that. I used PEER 6 and 7 and did them multiple times because there is a lot of good info in the explanations. I used the high yield sheet that was posted here (do a search for bizz buzz) and read through it a few times during residency and the week before the test.
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Wow. That's a lot of reviewing. You definitely put in the work and I'm sure you did very well. I worked through PEER VII once a few days before the exam and reviewed the questions I missed. I felt alright about the test but not great. I'm sure I would have felt better had I put in as much preparation as you did. Kudos, and I feel like a complete slacker now.
 
Results of the written board will be mailed by ABEM on 1/15.
 
Great. This just renews my anxiety. I had successfully (almost) blocked it from my mind these last several weeks. Well...
 
Is there any way to logon to the abem website and figure out if you have passed before results are mailed out? I know that for oral boards people would logon and there would be a certification expiration date posted which meant they passed. would a oral board date be posted or something similar on the site to let us know that we passed?
 
chicago06 said:
Is there any way to logon to the abem website and figure out if you have passed before results are mailed out? I know that for oral boards people would logon and there would be a certification expiration date posted which meant they passed. would a oral board date be posted or something similar on the site to let us know that we passed?
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No. You can use this for the oral exam (because it shows you're certified), but it doesn't list anything related to the tests itself.
 
Passed as well. I'll be starting my search for cushy pediatric gynecologic toxicology jobs tomorrow.
 
uncwalley said:
Passed as well. I'll be starting my search for cushy pediatric gynecologic toxicology jobs tomorrow.
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snap. i won't be home for another week. is there any other way to get the results? aside from waiting one week!
 
Strong work to all.

Take care,
Jeff
 
FINALLY found out I too passed. Takes a little time for the mail to get here from the States.
 
Passed also. Please recommend a good oral board review course and text? Thanks.
 
Passed with flying colors..! Not. I did okay though. Passed, which is all that counts. 😉
GL to everyone else who hasn't taken it yet.
 
Bumping this thread. Is there a way to preview the software used in the written exam, similar to how we could use it for the STEP's? Also, I haven't found any information on ABEM's website about the timing of the test day. Is it a series of question blocks, about one hour in duration each, and then make our own breaks? (Again, similar to the STEP's)
 
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