ABFAS Exams

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bloxxeeey

bloxxeeey

Full Member
5+ Year Member
How did everyone feel about forefoot, rear foot is tomorrow. I thought CBPS was fair but the didactic portion was insanely difficult. I think the problem I have is that I don't really know how to prepare for it or improve for it if I have to take it again. I really did not like their question base and it really seems their goal isn't to test your knowledge but to trick you.
 
bloxxeeey said:
How did everyone feel about forefoot, rear foot is tomorrow. I thought CBPS was fair but the didactic portion was insanely difficult. I think the problem I have is that I don't really know how to prepare for it or improve for it if I have to take it again. I really did not like their question base and it really seems their goal isn't to test your knowledge but to trick you.
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If you can’t pass didactic the first time around the problem is you. Not the test. You have been through three board exams in school and the ABFAS qualifying exam. It’s the same stuff over and over and over. How many didactic questions can they ask pertaining to foot and ankle?
 
My ITE results today : Foot 490/460. I only got 380 in labs/imagines/diagnostic procedures, significantly lower than average, probably because I shotgun tests and labs
RRA : 435/410. Only 300 for labs/tests/diagnostic procedures in CBPS , same above reasons. I wish I had read the post from Adam before.
I took these ITEs without studying anything. Would you recommend any books/materials If you had a chance to retake this exam ? I'm 2nd year from a mediocre program and I have no desire to be certified RRA. My goal is pass both ABFAS foot ITE next year, ABPM after graduation.
Thanks everyone again for a lot of useful information. Like I said, I wish I knew this forum before I entered this career.
 
I went through everything to get my abfas certification, and now it really isn't financially worth it to do much surgery. I can do much better in the office. I guess if I did a lot of surgery it would pay off, but most of what I see does not need to be out of office surgical. Time spent going to hospital, then the headaches of care during the global, worrying about patient compliance, liability, etc. The reimbursement doesn't match the work.
 
Creflo said:
I went through everything to get my abfas certification, and now it really isn't financially worth it to do much surgery. I can do much better in the office. I guess if I did a lot of surgery it would pay off, but most of what I see does not need to be out of office surgical. Time spent going to hospital, then the headaches of care during the global, worrying about patient compliance, liability, etc. The reimbursement doesn't match the work.
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I want to be certified ABFAS only, not necessarily RRA. I have heard some hospitals don't give privileges for ABPM. I probably do small and not difficult cases only but I don't want it happens to me.
 
podiatryresident said:
I want to be certified ABFAS only, not necessarily RRA. I have heard some hospitals don't give privileges for ABPM. I probably do small and not difficult cases only but I don't want it happens to me.
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If you have an issue with privileging, call ABPM. We’ve been *nearly 100% successful at getting ABPM added for surgical privileges. We get our privileging attorney involved early.

*since I’ve been on the board, there were only 2 cases we couldn’t help for complicated circumstances.
 
diabeticfootdr said:
If you have an issue with privileging, call ABPM. We’ve been *nearly 100% successful at getting ABPM added for surgical privileges. We get our privileging attorney involved early.

*since I’ve been on the board, there were only 2 cases we couldn’t help for complicated circumstances.
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Politics aside, it is nice to hear of people fighting for our profession.
 
podiatryresident said:
My ITE results today : Foot 490/460. I only got 380 in labs/imagines/diagnostic procedures, significantly lower than average, probably because I shotgun tests and labs
RRA : 435/410. Only 300 for labs/tests/diagnostic procedures in CBPS , same above reasons. I wish I had read the post from Adam before.
I took these ITEs without studying anything. Would you recommend any books/materials If you had a chance to retake this exam ? I'm 2nd year from a mediocre program and I have no desire to be certified RRA. My goal is pass both ABFAS foot ITE next year, ABPM after graduation.
Thanks everyone again for a lot of useful information. Like I said, I wish I knew this forum before I entered this career.
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You sound like that dude in every class who freaks out over everything and always still passes

I think ull be fine
 
podiatryresident said:
My ITE results today : Foot 490/460. I only got 380 in labs/imagines/diagnostic procedures, significantly lower than average, probably because I shotgun tests and labs
RRA : 435/410. Only 300 for labs/tests/diagnostic procedures in CBPS , same above reasons. I wish I had read the post from Adam before.
I took these ITEs without studying anything. Would you recommend any books/materials If you had a chance to retake this exam ? I'm 2nd year from a mediocre program and I have no desire to be certified RRA. My goal is pass both ABFAS foot ITE next year, ABPM after graduation.
Thanks everyone again for a lot of useful information. Like I said, I wish I knew this forum before I entered this career.
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All my scores were in the 400s as well so I did not pass a single section since minimum required is 500 I think 🙁
 
Congrats to all who passed... keep studying whether you did well or poorly or mediocre.
If you did worse than expected or desired, talk to co-residents who did well or director or attendings who are ABFAS and see what to read.*
Then put in the time and read that stuff, practice questions, read more.**
*easy part
**hard part

The exams are very passable. @Retrograde_Nail is correct. Some programs have basically 100% pass while others are low or almost zero. It's no coincidence. I've failed exams, everyone has... you can pass the next time around if you work harder. Learn the test formats better, find better resources... but mainly put in the time and work. Not everyone does.

Creflo said:
I went through everything to get my abfas certification, and now it really isn't financially worth it to do much surgery. I can do much better in the office. I guess if I did a lot of surgery it would pay off, but most of what I see does not need to be out of office surgical. Time spent going to hospital, then the headaches of care during the global, worrying about patient compliance, liability, etc. The reimbursement doesn't match the work.
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I would tend to agree, but it is good to be able to offer all F&A services - at least diagnostic, if not also surgical.

It is VERY good for the patients to be able to recognize the pathology and know what needs surgery and what doesn't. That's all ABFAS (didactic and CBPS) is: testing that book knowledge, which every DPM should theoretically have.*
*this assumes our residencies are good and standarized (not true)

...but yeah, at the end of the day, you can make a fine living in PP just doing ingrowns, warts, RFC, DME and PT for non-op fractures, etc.

That said, PCPs probably don't want to send me heel pain but not ankle instability, Peds doesn't want to send ingrowns but not flatfoot s/p clubfoot, hospitalist doesn't want a DPM for nail care but not osteomyelitis, ER shouldn't have to remember I do forefoot fractures but not rearfoot, etc. You are already a specialist; it usually pays to just be one-stop F&A care.

There are definitely pathologies I'd like to get rid of (alcoholic trauma pts... and pretty much all wound/amp/Charcot), and that's moreso because they're annoying or low reimburse than they're difficult. If I did decline them (or didn't know the surgery and sent that out), I wonder if I'd have half the refer sources which. They like that they can send me anything and it gets handled well (99% by me), and those refer relationships are the lifeblood of PP - or any practice.

Podiatry missed the boat badly on having all of us being general podiatry and just some being high volume + competency surgeons (dent model).
 
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Establishing rearfoot/trauma based PP is difficult and not worth it unless you’re an absolute machine like some of the attendings who do high power fellowships.

It’s much easier for IM/FM/ED docs to send their fractures to an ortho group which is guaranteed to have someone to fix a fracture rather than roll the dice on a podiatrist knowing how to do it or not. Even if the doc knows you can do ankle fractures they probably don’t know whether they’re sending you a bimal or a complex pilon which can ruin your day.

IMO our referral strength is in clinic pathology, limb salvage, and RFC - aka the stuff the big ortho group in town doesn’t want or will have a patient placed on a month long wait list for heel pain


It’s always best to know how to do everything..but if your clinic is seeing only a couple ankle fractures a year you may need to step back and think whether it’s better the patient see someone doing 100+ of them a year or you.
 
Hybrocure said:
IMO our referral strength is in clinic pathology, limb salvage, and RFC - aka the stuff the big ortho group in town doesn’t want or will have a patient placed on a month long wait list for heel pain
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100%. All day everyday. PP docs look at us as the limb salvage experts.
 
Shiyuan said:
100%. All day everyday. PP docs look at us as the limb salvage experts.
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And we are with good reason. It’s a service at every hospital I’ve been at vascular teams, gen surg, ortho, etc look to podiatry for guidance or management for.
 
Unless hospitals have an employed podiatrist or podiatry is on an ER call board for at least diabetic foot.....podiatry will only get what other specialties do not want regardless of ability.

That does not mean one cannot build a practice with some diabetic foot and get referrals to their office, but other than grafts and toe amputations it is not usually good income to quality of life scenario.
 
icebreaker32 said:
Unless hospitals have an employed podiatrist or podiatry is on an ER call board for at least diabetic foot.....podiatry will only get what other specialties do not want regardless of ability.

That does not mean one cannot build a practice with some diabetic foot and get referrals to their office, but other than grafts and toe amputations it is not usually good income to quality of life scenario.
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Yeah that is true. Toe amps/toe osteo is good in PP. Level 4 new patient plus debridement code plus cam boot to offload. No more global for toe amps too.

Regarding quality of life, unless it has gas I usually don’t admit. Majority of toe osteo can be handled as outpatient surgery with oral abx. Amp where the tissue is clean, gap a bit of the suture in a primary closure to let drain. Make sure you get a good bone margin to path and cultures. No need for waiting around for DPC. Lesser digits can usually be done in office even. Much less headache than morning rounding and night time surgery for gassed out TMAs
 
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Hybrocure said:
Establishing rearfoot/trauma based PP is difficult and not worth it unless you’re an absolute machine like some of the attendings who do high power fellowships.

It’s much easier for IM/FM/ED docs to send their fractures to an ortho group which is guaranteed to have someone to fix a fracture rather than roll the dice on a podiatrist knowing how to do it or not. Even if the doc knows you can do ankle fractures they probably don’t know whether they’re sending you a bimal or a complex pilon which can ruin your day.

IMO our referral strength is in clinic pathology, limb salvage, and RFC - aka the stuff the big ortho group in town doesn’t want or will have a patient placed on a month long wait list for heel pain


It’s always best to know how to do everything..but if your clinic is seeing only a couple ankle fractures a year you may need to step back and think whether it’s better the patient see someone doing 100+ of them a year or you.
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100% agree with. But a new grad will still want to pursue surgery
Hybrocure said:
Yeah that is true. Toe amps/toe osteo is good in PP. Level 4 new patient plus debridement code plus cam boot to offload. No more global for toe amps too.
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This 15-20 mins office visit code in total pays about the same as an ankle fracture ORIF that takes half a day clinic time.
 
It can't just be about the money though. I think many of us want to do work that is meaningful too.

Trim nails/calluses of an invalid is a decent cash flow. From a productivity ($/hr) perspective, it's better than a bunionectomy and most rearfoot surgery. But if that's the only thing I did all day I would drink myself to death.

Yeah there's a philosophical/religious view that we are upholding the dignity of human life by attending to the hygiene needs of the elderly, disabled, and infirm. But I think many of us could put our talents to better use in other ways.

So I do a lot of medicaid surgery, I do pro bono cases for the uninsured. I know, first-world problems, a lot of the more recent residency grads have bigger struggles trying to make ends meet. Just my humble opinion.

Sorry, wasn't this thread about a test or something?
 
Here is what I think about surgeries. This whole profitable facility fees which are what make surgeries worth the time for hospitals cannot be sustainable forever. At some point the insurances/Medicare will have to cut those. The private practice guys like us are just feeling this ahead of time, but eventually it will affect everyone equally.

Just decided to jump back into the game by doing a rearfoot case (cavus recon) for the sake of it and the patient has been wanting this for a while. Patient immediately brought back disability forms and FMLA forms. Uh... also what's up with this whole shortage of Norco-5? Had to change my Rx a few times as no pharmacies carry them anymore.

On a positive note, a local derm group is sending me all foot and ankle stuff. I don't mind treating warts or cutting those skin tags off. The derm guys got the best payors.
 
msion said:
Here is what I think about surgeries. This whole profitable facility fees which are what make surgeries worth the time for hospitals cannot be sustainable forever. At some point the insurances/Medicare will have to cut those. The private practice guys like us are just feeling this ahead of time, but eventually it will affect everyone equally.

Just decided to jump back into the game by doing a rearfoot case (cavus recon) for the sake of it and the patient has been wanting this for a while. Patient immediately brought back disability forms and FMLA forms. Uh... also what's up with this whole shortage of Norco-5? Had to change my Rx a few times as no pharmacies carry them anymore.

On a positive note, a local derm group is sending me all foot and ankle stuff. I don't mind treating warts or cutting those skin tags off. The derm guys got the best payors.
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Derm groups are such good referral sources. The ones who refer to me really love that they can send to podiatry and will literally refer anything involving the foot even if it’s a simple pathology like calluses, warts, or fungus.

Can they treat this stuff? Yeah definitely. But I imagine they don’t want pathology like that flooding up their already busy and wait listed schedules for more profitable or interesting derm pathology.
 
Aresnebula said:
Does anyone recommend Goldfarb foundation as a resource to study for the ABFAS exam?
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Almost certaintly dog****. Let's just put it this way. Goldfarb sells you Boards by the Numbers as part of their didactic. I did BBTN. It was terrible. Its not a reflection of what's on ABFAS. Literally - go to BBTN's website - they literally have a picture saying they are study software for the "American Board of Podiatric Surgery Certification Exam". That isn't even ABFAS's name anymore. That's how old this outdated garbage is. BBTN is full of questions about bone scans. I had zero bone scan questions on my didactic. Goldfarb appears to sell you like 6 CBPS exams. Boards Wizards sells you like 100 CBPS exams.
 
heybrother said:
Almost certaintly dog****. Let's just put it this way. Goldfarb sells you Boards by the Numbers as part of their didactic. I did BBTN. It was terrible. Its not a reflection of what's on ABFAS. Literally - go to BBTN's website - they literally have a picture saying they are study software for the "American Board of Podiatric Surgery Certification Exam". That isn't even ABFAS's name anymore. That's how old this outdated garbage is. BBTN is full of questions about bone scans. I had zero bone scan questions on my didactic. Goldfarb appears to sell you like 6 CBPS exams. Boards Wizards sells you like 100 CBPS exams.
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Thank you, definitely won't waste my money on them then.
 
Aresnebula said:
Does anyone recommend Goldfarb foundation as a resource to study for the ABFAS exam?
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BoardWizards and Boards Blast are your basic choices now...

IMO, you don't really need any of them. Study core texts (McGlam, Coughlin, Easley, Myerson), manuals (PI, others), ACFAS clinical practice guidelines, and then do practice MC tests and practice CBPS from ABFAS.

BoardWizards is helpful to get a lot more CBPS reps and a good use of resident CME during 3rd year, but it's not totally necessary. If you know the pathologies/indications, you can just review the lists of choices for radiology/labs/exam and tx/dx that ABFAS gives you on their practice. That said, I found it to be a good buy when I had to do the "new" CBPS with many more cases than the orig format.
 
Aresnebula said:
Does anyone recommend Goldfarb foundation as a resource to study for the ABFAS exam?
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No Board Wizards is the best resource to pass. Bought it and took every exam and did every didactic question. That is all I used. Passed everything first time around. Their cases will teach you how to take the test and pass.

It's not too expensive. If it is ask mommy and daddy to pay for it. It's worth it to spare yourself pain and suffering of having to retake.
 
Idk but I finally decided to order my abpm certificate and that **** doesn’t fit any standard size frames. This should be criminal how little effort they put into their members for the price of that exam.
 
hopefulstudent55 said:
Theoretically in the past, do scores take closer to the 6 or the 8 weeks they state to wait?
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Typically only took 4 weeks.

The pass rates have probably going up too high and they needed more people to fail. Guessing they hired some new statisticians to find creative ways to cut off an extra couple percent from the crowd
 
msion said:
...On a positive note, a local derm group is sending me all foot and ankle stuff. I don't mind treating warts or cutting those skin tags off. The derm guys got the best payors.
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The truly wild part is that the derm fee schedules from those same payors are probably 150% or more of your podiatry fee rates for everything (1711x, 1142x, 1110x, etc)... they just don't have time or want for most of it.

It's amazing how well the MD specialties that have supply/demand figured out do. Podiatry could learn a thing. 🙂

Hybrocure said:
Derm groups are such good referral sources. The ones who refer to me really love that they can send to podiatry and will literally refer anything involving the foot even if it’s a simple pathology like calluses, warts, or fungus.

Can they treat this stuff? Yeah definitely. But I imagine they don’t want pathology like that flooding up their already busy and wait listed schedules for more profitable or interesting derm pathology.
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Exactly... 5000% correct. Why would they have assistants to help people with socks/shoes when they can just do arm and face and neck lesions that pay them same and are a lot faster and cleaner?

Again, the hallmarks of a specialty without saturation: good demand and income, jobs anywhere they choose, can pick/choose pathology, naturally attract top med students and residents.
The only derm in my area ran 2 or 3 PAs and still consistently on a 6-9+ month wait for new patients the whole time I've been here (didn't even do cosmetic... could've been even more insanely busy if she did).

Derm, like plastics, is sooo in demand they even have fakes (FP or gen surg or midlevels or etc advertising as being their specialty). That's fairly easy for most ppl to vet out... uber easy for hospitals or MSGs hiring them. I don't see a lot of midlevels and FPs - or even nurses - jumping to be posing as podiatry? 🙁
 
Historically, can anyone provide any insight into how the Spring exam is comparison to the Fall exam? Is it essentially laid out the same way with the same level of difficulty?

Any retakers have any advice on what they did differently that they found especially helpful for the didactics portion?
 
Does anyone who has been through ABFAS know if they email you saying you passed the facility audit?
 
PMG03470 said:
Does anyone who has been through ABFAS know if they email you saying you passed the facility audit?
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I don't believe they did. Last year I had some discrepancy between what I submitted and what the hospital was calling it. Was kind of nervous but ended up passing just fine.
 
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