Abim 2011

[Entol]

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Do you know for sure they actually took the exam?

You don't have to take it.

yes, one of the two actually took it at the same site as me on the same day.

 

[bulldog]

This was a tough test. I feel very fortunate to have passed. Here's some tips that may be helpful to those who need to retake it or will take it for the first time in 2012.

When I was a resident in IM, I remember I scored about 30%tile on two consecutive inservice exams. I must admit that I didn't bother to do any practice questions/read on a regular basis. Then came third year in 2010 in which reality set in and the boards were pending. From April 2010 til about June 2010, I did MKSAP 15 once and scored anywhere from 57-70% (see attachment). Then fellowship started July 2010 and I got through half of MKSAP a second time. Two weeks before I was due to take ABIM August 2010, I had an uneasy feeling about the exam cuz a variety of factors so I decided to not take it. Thought I would focus my efforts on other endeavors. Didn't study for the IM boards until April 2011 during first year of fellowship. Then I did about 50 questions a day or about 1-2 hours starting in April and slowly built up to about 2-3 hours a day on average, at most 6-8 hours a day just prior to exam on days I didn't have to work.

In 2011, got through MKSAP 15 about 1.5 times. Then I did only the missed questions from Runs 1, 2, and 3 of MKSAP 15 between 2010 and 2011. See attachment for percentages on each. Read board basics about 2-3 times but couldn't retain all the details. A month before exam, I spent two weeks doing MKSAP 14 (see attachment for scores). Then two weeks before exam, I again did only the missed MKSAP 15 and MKSAP 14 questions, and also did the updates/supplements from MKSAP. As I was doing the questions, I'd jot down whatever facts I didn't know. By the last week, I was only reviewing my notes. Then last 3 days, I only did questions that I had missed 3 times or more between the various runs.

As for actual test, I thought the questions were very random. There were stuff that I knew from general knowledge or mksap 14/15. There were a few questions I picked up from doing the updates/supplement mksap. There were also some questions of random details out of the blue which I had no idea where they came from. A few questions that were verbatim from board basics. During exam, I often thought to myself: "WTF? this question wasn't in MKSAP 14, 15, or board basics!?!". I went back after the test and looked through Medstudy and didn't see the answers to these random questions either. I did buy medstudy but never read it..it was too dense.

I'm not sure if I would have passed had I taken it in 2010. I'm glad that I put it off til 2011 to give me more time to focus on other things in 2010. As I was doing MKSAP, I didn't feel that I had forgotten a lot of stuff either. So that's my experience in a nutshell.

 

[NDESTRUKT]

Don't be discouraged! Each year many people who are more than competent fail the board exam. I went to what most would consider a top tier university residency and every year we'd have one person fail, who was actually a very capable resident. Oftentimes it's just being under prepared due to personal reasons or time constraints.

Read MedStudy, do all the MKSAPs and do a review course like "Awesome Review".

And start early!

 

[SlimMD]

I can say one thing about inservice exams, they really don't matter unless you plan on not studying.(even then beware)

In fact you are encouraged to not study for the inservice exam, which has always been stupid to me.

I did poorly on the ITE and passed the boards with just studying alone. NO board review.

 

[Iceman!!!!!!!!]

I can say one thing about inservice exams, they really don't matter unless you plan on not studying.(even then beware)

In fact you are encouraged to not study for the inservice exam, which has always been stupid to me.

I did poorly on the ITE and passed the boards with just studying alone. NO board review.

I agree with that assessment. I never studied for the in-service exams and found myself in the average category. In my 3rd year, my PD told me after the in-service exam that I was 'on the border' to pass the boards based on in-service performances.

I only studied for 10 days, but I did start doing questions randomly 2 months prior to the exam. I finished MKSAP with around 63-65% correct. And I almost finished all 1100 or so MKSAP questions. I have to say, I found myself pretty comfortable with the exam. I came out thinking that I should be able to pass. I was glad that it all worked out.

Based on conversations and observations of people that I know who failed, they were either busy because of family or new fellowship pressures. Or simply just overestimated their own ability. I don't think you can just go in to this exam without any studying or MKSAP questions and expect to pass. Then again,some people evidently took it seriously and didn't pass - which puts test day conditions in the equation. No matter how well you are prepared, if you were having a bad day for an numerous reasons on that particular day - that's just bad luck and unfair. But it happens all the time.

For example, I know 2 former program chiefs in my program who didn't pass. One particular similarity between them, they didn't take the exam the first year and they were both new mothers when they attempted the exam the following year. Not that having babies is to blame, but I am sure their work schedule was more compromised with the new responsibility.

Another case is that of a star resident, declined chief spot to match into an IV league competitive fellowship. She flunked, and I can only imagine that the pressures of a new place, competitive fellowship and work schedule got the best of her.

Everyone has a different story, but if you work hard and start early then the odds are surely in your favor.

 

[Bandido]

I am in the same boat as most of the people in this forum. I studied, did questions, felt like I was doing an good job at the exam (not overconfident, though), and still flunked. It was really humiliating and embarrasing to see that I failed the test and know that others who were just partying all the time and are "not so good" did pass. How messed up is that?!
Now, my questions is: For those of you who passed.
1. Did you read the whole MKSAP or just did the questions?
2. Did you read Medstusy AND MKSAP or just Medstudy then did MKSAP questions?
3.All the review courses are later next year, does anyone recommend to start watching videos now?

I had never heard of the Awesome Review until I entered this forum. I know last year there was a big issue with one of the review courses and peolpe getting in trouble with the ABIM. I definitely want to pass and will try to attend a review that people who have passed recommend, but don't want to get in trouble and, above all, I don't want my certification removed later because the ABIM found something fishy with the review. Are you guys sure the people who organize this review course can be trusted

 

[Fred21]

See below.

 

[Fred21]

About a year ago I saw a very helpful post on the SDN about this exam, might be this helps somebody this year.


.…..this was my prep strategy:

8-9 months prep time (in the evenings and especially the weekends) with increasing intensity during the past 3-4 weeks before the exam. I focused on questions only during the last 3-4 weeks before the exam (I repeated especially the questions of my weak areas). I tried to avoid to focus only on MKSAP questions, as this question set alone, does not work for everybody! I tried different sets of questions (MKSAP15, some of MKSAP 14, latest Medstudy questions, latest Medstudy Board review course book questions !) and worked on them 1-3 x or until I was consistently in the 75 % range with new questions and in the 80 % range with repeat questions (my weak areas).
I read very carefully whenever I saw something from Douglas S Pauuw. He is editor of Board Basics 2 and is doing the GenMed course of Medstudy!! I liked very much his GenMed part of the course DVDs! Very helpful!!
I tried NOT to neglect the so called miscellaneous part! GenMed, Derm, Psych, ENT, Allergy, WH, Geriatrics, EM, Ophthal, also some ID and Endo questions fall in this field !
I read the Board Basics 2 from ACP (it is a VERY dense text)….every single area, until I knew and understood its content and had the areas covered! When I did questions and got them wrong the second time, I went back and made sure I had everything of that area covered by reading in Medstudy Core curriculum and BB2 about it. So at the end before the exam I had read the BB2 content 2-3 times…especially the "don't be tricked areas and the yellow areas!!".
I found the IM Medstudy Core Curriculum VERY helpful …the grey boxes with the study points helped a lot! I read the whole core curriculum 1x, I repeated my weak areas (areas where I did questions wrong) by reading the grey study point areas/questions and the parts underlined in yellow in the text.

I also found this helpful paragraph below in a blog on the ABIM exam a while ago. Might be it is helpful to some of the future test takers too?
"I reviewed the American College of Physicians board review material, MKSAP, while studying for my exam. The books and questions were good for medical knowledge, but in no way did it reflect the material ACTUALLY tested on the exam. The only material that ACP has distributed that was remotely similar to the boards was its "board basics" book. In this book, there are sections entitled "don't be tricked" in which they give the right answer to confusing or misleading questions. Another very popular study material, Medstudy, had some questions in its review book that were near replicas of many questions that I had on my exam."

 

[yobabydoc]

Very discouraged since I didn't pass again. I did have quite a bit going on family wise but I had been studying every day for the entire year pretty much. Dunno.

 

[Member 234123]

I passed too, thankfully.🙂

For those looking to correlate the inservice exam percentiles to the actual board exam results, there is no actual correlation. There have been a number of studies done which show that higher/lower ITE exam scores don't always result in board exam success/failure, respectively.

The 2 exams are also much different in number of questions, time to respond for each question, the degree of difficulty. I found the questions on the ITE to be the hardest out of any exam I have taken, whereas the boards seemed the easiest.

For those who may be wondering, I only did MKSAP 15 questions, no medstudy and no review course. 62% first time 83 second and over 90 by the end. Probably did MKSAP 15 roughly 3.5 times.

 

[92103211973]

For all of you who did not pass, my scenario may make you feel better or worse. I just received my test results and failed for the 5th time. What makes me really nervous is thinking that to be in the bottom 10-13% of testtakers 5 years in row, I must be doing something systematically wrong. If anyone can make any suggestions that would be helpful I would be so grateful! I would love to hear especially from the people who failed, took the exam again and passed.

Here is my history- to put things in context, I did my "preliminary"internship in 2001. At the end of my internship year I gave birth to my first child. From 2001-2003, I did a specialty residency but decided it wasn't for me and did not finish the program. From 2003-2004, I had my second child and was at home. From 2004-2006, I finished an IM residency and was considered a very good to excellent resident. From 2006-2010, I did a fellowship and now I am in my second year as an attending. I went to what many would consider a "topnotch" med school and got into a very competitive residency on graduation. I have never been a good test taker, wasn't AOA, but made it through med school with my clinical grades being better than the first 1.5 years of med school. I have always been interested in a research career and my board status has not interfered with that. I do want to pass this exam though and if anyone can tell me what it is in my study approach that I am doing wrong and how I can study differently and successfully, I would be very grateful.

Test attempt Year Preparation Results
1 2007 Very little, read some parts of MKSAP Failed, by greater than one SD

2 2008 Medstudy video, ACP review course,did very few question, study for 2 months straight Failed, but much improved, score was very close to passing

3 2009 Read all of Medstudy, took notes, did very few questions, started studying in June Failed with scores similar to 2007

4 2010 Medstudy Review Course, some Medstudy questions, was scoring in the 65-75% on questions, started studying in May failed but was even closer to passing than 2008

5 2011 From January on, met with a "board guru" hospitalist on a weekly basis, read mksap thoroughly, did all mksap questions with scores about 70%, did not read Medstudy, did some Medstudy questions and got about 75% on them

For those of you who passed, do you recommend Medstudy or MKSAP or both? How many times did you read them? What questions did you do and how many times? In my opinion, since your score is weighted against the performance of your peers, understudying is the number one way to fail. How many times did the average testtaker who passed go through the material? Do you recommend sticking to questions only?

 

[transcriptio]

my ITE was 47 percentile
materials used to study: medstudy x5, mksap questions x1 only without text, medstudy question book x 1. personally, i would say medstudy is perhaps the best resource to prepare for abim. u dont really appreciate its value unless u have read it 3X. each page of medstudy is condensed with so much info. unlike mksap in which 3 pages of info cannot be on part with half page of medstudy.
duration of study: started during early pgy3
my 2 cents

 

[ckplay2011]

Very discouraged since I didn't pass again. I did have quite a bit going on family wise but I had been studying every day for the entire year pretty much. Dunno.

It's how much time you put in, but studying smart. 50 hours at awesome review likely give you better results than 500 hours studying on your own.

 

[gutonc]

It's how much time you put in, but studying smart. 50 hours at awesome review likely give you better results than 500 hours studying on your own.

Somebody's got a boat payment to make.

 

[jdh71]

Somebody's got a boat payment to make.

My best friend's father, does review courses, for another medical specialty (not IM), and no longer practices any medicine. He now makes 10x what he did as a physician, which surprises me because I know this particular specialty does quite well, better than your average IM guy anyway. I think these review courses largely play on the insecurities of those taking them, which is not to say that they probably don't help some, but largely it's all one big mind-****. He tells it that most of the people who take his course would probably pass, but they've completely lost their confidence.

Maybe I went into the wrong business.

 

[gutonc]

My best friend's father, does review courses, for another medical specialty (not IM), and no longer practices any medicine. He now makes 10x what he did as a physician, which surprises me because I know this particular specialty does quite well, better than your average IM guy anyway. I think these review courses largely play on the insecurities of those taking them, which is not to say that they probably don't help some, but largely it's all one big mind-****. He tells it that most of the people who take his course would probably pass, but they've completely lost their confidence.

Maybe I went into the wrong business.

I think board review courses fall squarely under the rubric of "those who can, do...those who can't, teach."

I don't fell this way about actual teachers mind you, just those who prey on the insecurities of others...for a significant fee of course.

 

[leonie]

Any idea when the Certificate will be sent to us? Or may be there is no certificate at all? Will we get a break up of our marks like the inservice exam? I was unsure of these questions, so please let me know. Thanx.😕

 

[2012ABIM]

From the time I knew my failure, I am still thinking about the exam and very regretful. I could not sleep last night.

What a pain?

I don't know when to start to study again, have to wait until the official report.

This is the biggest failure in my life. I never failed any exam but did with the last exam in my life.

 

[insidor]

Any idea when the Certificate will be sent to us? Or may be there is no certificate at all? Will we get a break up of our marks like the inservice exam? I was unsure of these questions, so please let me know. Thanx.😕

You will be mailed your certificate likely around February

In a few weeks you will also get a letter from the ABIM with:

Standarized Passing Score & Your Standardized Score

You'll also get a breakdown (similar to the ITE) in different categories -
which will include number of questions asked in the category, your percent correct in that category and decile (ranked 1-10)

 

[Member11411]

Hi everyone,

What books and materials (audio, DVDs, etc.) did you use to prepare and what did you think was helpful? Also, which atlas is good? I've heard of Jackson and Forbes.

Secondly, which live board review courses would you recommend? In particular, does anyone know how useful the Cleveland Clinic Review Course is for initial certification?


I didn't pass the first time and this was what I did:
2 months time
Mksap questions (once through)
residency program board review
read select topics from medstudy


I currently plan to do the following:
9 months time
Medstudy core curriculum
MKSAP study questions
Medstudy videos (to buy)
Medstudy flash cards (to buy)
some form of live board review


I'm afraid to fall into the trap of having too much material and being spread out too thin. What do you think?

Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!!

 

[Fred21]

It's how much time you put in, but studying smart. 50 hours at awesome review likely give you better results than 500 hours studying on your own.

I don't know about this awesome review course, but I would agree with this quote in general. You can spend a LOT of time in preparation for the ABIM, studying the wrong things. I heard that the main advantage going to such a course is that they will give you a very good idea, which topics are a MUST to know !! ......and those topics they want you to know VERY well on the exam! They really don't ask zebras.

 

[leonie]

You will be mailed your certificate likely around February

In a few weeks you will also get a letter from the ABIM with:

Standarized Passing Score & Your Standardized Score

You'll also get a breakdown (similar to the ITE) in different categories -
which will include number of questions asked in the category, your percent correct in that category and decile (ranked 1-10)

Thanks a lot! That was very helpful. 🙂

 

[bulldog]

30% inservice exam on two consecutive years. passed.

 

[2012ABIM]

I am in the same boat. I could not sleep and still think about the exam, especially about the time of residency. I could not believe some worse residents in my program passed but 3 friends of my and I did not.

I started doing question from yesterday during my call.

MKSAP 15 Cardio: 30 questions.

Plan:

1. Do MKSAP 15 questions (subject)----->read text----->do questions again.
2. Will read basic boards at least 5 times.
3. Will take notes, record myself, then listen during driving (my car can play WMA format) because I spend lots of time for driving.
4. Will attend board review course (my employer pays)
5. Will do MKSAP 14 questions, Harrison questions, Kaplan questions also

 

[2012ABIM]

Now, the most important thing for me is to accept the result and forget about the pass. Another thing is motivation motivation motivation. I will log in this forum more often in order to get motivation.

 

[yobabydoc]

It's how much time you put in, but studying smart. 50 hours at awesome review likely give you better results than 500 hours studying on your own.

Awesome review was too fast pace for me. Plus couldn't always understand his accent!

 

[disc99]

From the time I knew my failure, I am still thinking about the exam and very regretful. I could not sleep last night.

What a pain?

I don't know when to start to study again, have to wait until the official report.

This is the biggest failure in my life. I never failed any exam but did with the last exam in my life.

I hear you, the feeling is horrible. I feel like dead inside. Hopefully, we will get more insight when we receive the score breakdowns and start studying right away after that.

 

[2012ABIM]

just curious, I am not requesting a rescoring for my ABIM but want to know anybody did it before. Is there any thing changed?

 

[gutonc]

just curious, I am not requesting a rescoring for my ABIM but want to know anybody did it before. Is there any thing changed?
----------------------
ACP ITE: 50% pertcentile.
Failed ABIM because of overconfidence and underestimation of the exam.
Will rock 2010 ABIM.

I have no idea but I love that you're going to rock the exam from a year ago. Please let us know how that works out next year.

 

[Bandido]

I am waiting for the official report as well to start studying ASAP (again!). Although this is a big deal right now, there is nothing more I can do about it. Suffering over it will not change my results. I have to put it behind without forgetting the experience and find the drive to study for next year's exam. Gosh! how I hate this!
I appreciate the advice from those who have passed.

 

[Sticit2theman]

Sorry all, definitely feel your pain, I can relate to the denial phase, and am mostly angry at this test as it is clinically irrelevant. I will say that I am going to use that anger to crush this test next year. What stage of grief am I in? I tried to find someone to bargain with but that dang ABIM site is useless. Venting on this site is actually making me less depressed and now that I can afford to eat I guess I can accept the fact that I have to spend another $$2K on this B***S*** test. It is harder to accept all the additional time I have to spend studying again though.

For those that have failed this test multiple times I applaud your tenacity. I haven't received my score report in the mail but, I plan on focusing on weak areas.

I do not know how to study for those odd questions that seem to come out of no where, like 2 questions on herbal medicine interactions (seriously?).

 

[2012ABIM]

I don't care much about money because my employer pays it for me. But I have a lots of plans ahead and all of them were canceled because I don't have any motivation to do.

 

[2012ABIM]

I have no idea but I love that you're going to rock the exam from a year ago. Please let us know how that works out next year.

Thanks man, I laughed when I read my signature, typo......

 

[NotAProgDirector]

I can answer this question for you. One of my residents failed last year. I couldn't believe it -- his ITE was fine, seemed impossible. I contacted the ABIM to ask them. I was planning on paying for the rescore myself. Their answer: Never. Needless to say, I didn't bother.

 

[hautboiskid]

Somebody's got a boat payment to make.

Agree. Only 4 posts, all since 11/2/2011, and they all mention Awesome Review Course..

 

[gutonc]

In order to keep things cleaner, I have merged the 4 active ABIM certification exam threads and stickied it. Please keep ABIM exam related questions in this thread. New ABIM exam related threads will be closed.

 

[Bandido]

A question for those of you who watched the medstudy videos. Did you watch them and read the sections in the core curriculum afterwards or did you read, then watched the videos?
I am debating whether to buy the videos now or waiting a little longer...

 

[Boondahgle]

Hey guys-
This forum is great. I still haven't slept well since finding out I failed the boards. The last thing I want to do is fail it again though I feel like I know many retakers who have had to go through this again.
What has worked for people that have retaken the test?
I read MKSAP, but don't think it helped.
So far I am thinking I will invest in Medstudy core curriculum, Medstudy Q&A, and do MKSAP questions (but not read the books) and just start really early since my fellowship keeps me pretty busy. I just know that I can't fail it again cause it will just keep getting harder and I will have fellowship boards I have to study for.
What do people think of the Medstudy video board review? Also, has anyone used those corescripts flashcards by Medstudy?
What do those of you who retook it and passed think of my plan?

 

[NDESTRUKT]

I am in the same boat. I could not sleep and still think about the exam, especially about the time of residency. I could not believe some worse residents in my program passed but 3 friends of my and I did not.

I started doing question from yesterday during my call.

MKSAP 15 Cardio: 30 questions.

Plan:

1. Do MKSAP 15 questions (subject)----->read text----->do questions again.
2. Will read basic boards at least 5 times.
3. Will take notes, record myself, then listen during driving (my car can play WMA format) because I spend lots of time for driving.
4. Will attend board review course (my employer pays)
5. Will do MKSAP 14 questions, Harrison questions, Kaplan questions also

Not that it's a dealbreaker but doing a lot of driving by itself can really take a toll on someone's mental faculties. I'd recommend not doing that drive the week prior to the exam. Even if you're getting good rest, it's tolling to the mind.

As a resident I drove about 1 hour and 15 min traffic to and from my residency program (mostly because I lived in Los Angeles) and listening to lectures definitely did NOT work because I was so restless and couldn't concentrate. I had to listen to NPR or music to keep myself from falling asleep.

 

[NYCNephrology]

Hi Everyone,

Many of my friends have failed this exam this year and I thought I would write a few words on what helped me to pass. I thought this years exam was indeed difficult. I graduated from residency in 2010 however I did not take the boards during my first year of fellowship due to my wedding/honeymoon. So I was definitely nervous about being 1 year removed from internal medicine. However, being a nephrology fellow does not allow you to forget internal medicine.

Knowing that I was 1 year out of training required more of an effort on my part. I see that a lot of people mention review classes in their blogs. I was never the type to get much from a lecturer and my attention would have indeed waxed and waned throughout the day. I knew that a review course was out. From what I hear about these course, they are known to be high yield for focused studying. However, I have friends who have taken these classes and have not passed.

In order to pass this test you have to have a mastery of some primary reading source. I would pick either MKSAP or medstudy. I used medstudy and I found that all my board questions were covered in medstudy. I am not sure about MKSAP. Nonetheless, no matter which one you use just make sure you master the content. Medstudy has some questions after every few pages that I thought were extremely helpful to bring everything together.

There is also mention of multiple question banks. I felt that MKSAP had questions that were similar to the real exam. I thought the difficulty level was also similar. I scored 75% on the first attempt and 90% when I did the questions over. I also did the medstudy question bank as well as Kaplan's Qbook. However, I only did these books once. MKSAP definitely has more complex questions which I chose to spend more time on. The point here is that questions are needed not just for their content but also for training yourself to battle through the 4 long sections of the boards.

Medstudy + MKSAP questions were more than sufficient to prepare me for this exam.

In terms of correlating your in-service exam to boards, I always found that to be useless. Most people don't study for these inservice tests. I definitely did not study and my percentile was low.

In terms of the exam itself, I felt there was a fair amount of every subspecialty covered. While cardiology and GI seemed to have more questions in general, I certainly did not feel that other specialties were not present. In fact, many questions integrated multiple fields.

What made this test difficult was the fact that it was not straight forward and the questions required multi tier reasoning. If you are looking for "buzzwords" in this test, good luck. There are questions that use these "buzzwords" but they are few in number. When studying for this test you have to consider all differentials and what factors differentiate the diagnoses from each other. For instance abdominal pain has many causes but when you study the causes try to generate a chart that differentiates the causes in terms of duration, associated symptoms, age, co-morbidities etc. This is how you get to the answer on the boards. Memorizing random disease will only get you confused during the exam.

For those that failed, I know that it must be a devastating feeling. I feel that the best approach to repeating this exam is to pinpoint you areas of major weakness and restart your studying with these areas being the initial focus for mastery.

Goodluck

 

[SlimMD]

I am in the same boat as most of the people in this forum. I studied, did questions, felt like I was doing an good job at the exam (not overconfident, though), and still flunked. It was really humiliating and embarrasing to see that I failed the test and know that others who were just partying all the time and are "not so good" did pass. How messed up is that?!
Now, my questions is: For those of you who passed.
1. Did you read the whole MKSAP or just did the questions?
2. Did you read Medstusy AND MKSAP or just Medstudy then did MKSAP questions?
3.All the review courses are later next year, does anyone recommend to start watching videos now?

I had never heard of the Awesome Review until I entered this forum. I know last year there was a big issue with one of the review courses and peolpe getting in trouble with the ABIM. I definitely want to pass and will try to attend a review that people who have passed recommend, but don't want to get in trouble and, above all, I don't want my certification removed later because the ABIM found something fishy with the review. Are you guys sure the people who organize this review course can be trusted

I did 95% of MKSAP questions. (Both 14 and 15)

I really did not care about %. I only cared that I read the explanation of each question and that I understood it. A lot of questions come out these explanations.

I read 90% of Medstudy. I swear at lot of questions come directly from these as well.

No board review because I'm not an auditory learner.

 

[SlimMD]

Hi Everyone,

Many of my friends have failed this exam this year and I thought I would write a few words on what helped me to pass. I thought this years exam was indeed difficult. I graduated from residency in 2010 however I did not take the boards during my first year of fellowship due to my wedding/honeymoon. So I was definitely nervous about being 1 year removed from internal medicine. However, being a nephrology fellow does not allow you to forget internal medicine.

Knowing that I was 1 year out of training required more of an effort on my part. I see that a lot of people mention review classes in their blogs. I was never the type to get much from a lecturer and my attention would have indeed waxed and waned throughout the day. I knew that a review course was out. From what I hear about these course, they are known to be high yield for focused studying. However, I have friends who have taken these classes and have not passed.

In order to pass this test you have to have a mastery of some primary reading source. I would pick either MKSAP or medstudy. I used medstudy and I found that all my board questions were covered in medstudy. I am not sure about MKSAP. Nonetheless, no matter which one you use just make sure you master the content. Medstudy has some questions after every few pages that I thought were extremely helpful to bring everything together.

There is also mention of multiple question banks. I felt that MKSAP had questions that were similar to the real exam. I thought the difficulty level was also similar. I scored 75% on the first attempt and 90% when I did the questions over. I also did the medstudy question bank as well as Kaplan's Qbook. However, I only did these books once. MKSAP definitely has more complex questions which I chose to spend more time on. The point here is that questions are needed not just for their content but also for training yourself to battle through the 4 long sections of the boards.

Medstudy + MKSAP questions were more than sufficient to prepare me for this exam.

In terms of correlating your in-service exam to boards, I always found that to be useless. Most people don't study for these inservice tests. I definitely did not study and my percentile was low.

In terms of the exam itself, I felt there was a fair amount of every subspecialty covered. While cardiology and GI seemed to have more questions in general, I certainly did not feel that other specialties were not present. In fact, many questions integrated multiple fields.

What made this test difficult was the fact that it was not straight forward and the questions required multi tier reasoning. If you are looking for "buzzwords" in this test, good luck. There are questions that use these "buzzwords" but they are few in number. When studying for this test you have to consider all differentials and what factors differentiate the diagnoses from each other. For instance abdominal pain has many causes but when you study the causes try to generate a chart that differentiates the causes in terms of duration, associated symptoms, age, co-morbidities etc. This is how you get to the answer on the boards. Memorizing random disease will only get you confused during the exam.

For those that failed, I know that it must be a devastating feeling. I feel that the best approach to repeating this exam is to pinpoint you areas of major weakness and restart your studying with these areas being the initial focus for mastery.

Goodluck

I agree with your whole post but I especially agree with this.

In the past I've had people tell me that the test was very straight forward.

I would have to disagree with that. Some question require a mastery of multiple concepts. Also they may give you a lab value which is in the upper limits of normal (not extremely high like you may expect) and you have to interpret this correctly.

Also I was told that the question were less difficult then mksap and that they were shorter.

Most of the questions are just as hard and they are just as long. (I was really surprised by the length of the questions)

The one good thing about the test was the time.

I never once felt rush although I did get tired of taking that test. (I took the whole 10 hours. Always have been a slow test taker)

 

[Fred21]

Hi Everyone,

Many of my friends have failed this exam this year and I thought I would write a few words on what helped me to pass. I thought this years exam was indeed difficult. I graduated from residency in 2010 however I did not take the boards during my first year of fellowship due to my wedding/honeymoon. So I was definitely nervous about being 1 year removed from internal medicine. However, being a nephrology fellow does not allow you to forget internal medicine.

Knowing that I was 1 year out of training required more of an effort on my part. I see that a lot of people mention review classes in their blogs. I was never the type to get much from a lecturer and my attention would have indeed waxed and waned throughout the day. I knew that a review course was out. From what I hear about these course, they are known to be high yield for focused studying. However, I have friends who have taken these classes and have not passed.

In order to pass this test you have to have a mastery of some primary reading source. I would pick either MKSAP or medstudy. I used medstudy and I found that all my board questions were covered in medstudy. I am not sure about MKSAP. Nonetheless, no matter which one you use just make sure you master the content. Medstudy has some questions after every few pages that I thought were extremely helpful to bring everything together.

There is also mention of multiple question banks. I felt that MKSAP had questions that were similar to the real exam. I thought the difficulty level was also similar. I scored 75% on the first attempt and 90% when I did the questions over. I also did the medstudy question bank as well as Kaplan's Qbook. However, I only did these books once. MKSAP definitely has more complex questions which I chose to spend more time on. The point here is that questions are needed not just for their content but also for training yourself to battle through the 4 long sections of the boards.

Medstudy + MKSAP questions were more than sufficient to prepare me for this exam.

In terms of correlating your in-service exam to boards, I always found that to be useless. Most people don't study for these inservice tests. I definitely did not study and my percentile was low.

In terms of the exam itself, I felt there was a fair amount of every subspecialty covered. While cardiology and GI seemed to have more questions in general, I certainly did not feel that other specialties were not present. In fact, many questions integrated multiple fields.

What made this test difficult was the fact that it was not straight forward and the questions required multi tier reasoning. If you are looking for "buzzwords" in this test, good luck. There are questions that use these "buzzwords" but they are few in number. When studying for this test you have to consider all differentials and what factors differentiate the diagnoses from each other. For instance abdominal pain has many causes but when you study the causes try to generate a chart that differentiates the causes in terms of duration, associated symptoms, age, co-morbidities etc. This is how you get to the answer on the boards. Memorizing random disease will only get you confused during the exam.

For those that failed, I know that it must be a devastating feeling. I feel that the best approach to repeating this exam is to pinpoint you areas of major weakness and restart your studying with these areas being the initial focus for mastery.

Goodluck

Couldn't agree more with your comment about buzzwords!

 

[Fred21]

Hey guys-
This forum is great. I still haven't slept well since finding out I failed the boards. The last thing I want to do is fail it again though I feel like I know many retakers who have had to go through this again.
What has worked for people that have retaken the test?
I read MKSAP, but don't think it helped.
So far I am thinking I will invest in Medstudy core curriculum, Medstudy Q&A, and do MKSAP questions (but not read the books) and just start really early since my fellowship keeps me pretty busy. I just know that I can't fail it again cause it will just keep getting harder and I will have fellowship boards I have to study for.
What do people think of the Medstudy video board review? Also, has anyone used those corescripts flashcards by Medstudy?
What do those of you who retook it and passed think of my plan?

The whole Medstudy video board review is probably overkill. I found very helpful: cardiology part, GenMed!!!!!!! part, pulmo part, probably ID, nephro. I would try to get their course book and include those questions (end of text, in the text) in my preparation. You'll do fine the next time🙂

 

[Boondahgle]

Thanks guys! I really appreciate some of this advice as I know my study strategy has to change. NYC nephrology-how many hours were you studying? What was your study schedule? I appreciate hearing from fellows cause I am in that situation and am trying to figure out how to best budget my time. I just started a medstudy book and find it much more readable than MKSAP. I also think it will help me with fellowship boards so that's good.
For people who passed, any ideas on how to divide up the time over the next 8-9 months while doing fellowship?

 

[ckplay2011]

Hey guys-
This forum is great. I still haven't slept well since finding out I failed the boards. The last thing I want to do is fail it again though I feel like I know many retakers who have had to go through this again.
What has worked for people that have retaken the test?
I read MKSAP, but don't think it helped.
So far I am thinking I will invest in Medstudy core curriculum, Medstudy Q&A, and do MKSAP questions (but not read the books) and just start really early since my fellowship keeps me pretty busy. I just know that I can't fail it again cause it will just keep getting harder and I will have fellowship boards I have to study for.
What do people think of the Medstudy video board review? Also, has anyone used those corescripts flashcards by Medstudy?
What do those of you who retook it and passed think of my plan?

You have the right attitude to pass. The only thing preventing some people from passing is their ego. This is a hard test! Personally I feel it's a money making machine and serves little purpose, but it will affect your career in a major way, virtually all credendialing committees require you to pass your board after 5 years. Insurance cos. too. It's not fair, but it's now a fact of life.

First advice is determine what was the real reason you failed. Don't be do quick to blame time constraints or other personal reasons as we all have those problems. For me, failing was due to arrogance (underestimating the test) lack of knowledge of the consequence of failing (not having sufficient fear), being a cheapskate and not buying any review materials and very poor time management. This year I addressed all the issues above. I made sure I overkilled for this test. Also don't be afraid to let your colleagues know you failed the test.

Next learn what has worked for others. I was a huge skeptics of review courses, but after half a dozen colleagues swear by the awesome review course, I finally did sign up for the very last course in July. That was a great decision. Some people think I am being paid to promote awesome review, but I am doing this because I know how ****ty I felt last year and want to help people. I have watched review course videos from medstudy and acp and frankly you're better off spending a week at home reading medstudy core curriculum. Awesome review nothing like you have experienced before. Believe me I tried getting my friends to describe it, but they all say you just have to experience it for yourself.
And NO, it's not like Aurora! This guy is a review teaching genius.

Others materials ht helped me were medstudy flash cards ($100?), board basics 2 (great little review book), medstudy books (a lot of material difficult to retain unless you read multiple times, I hated it), MKSAP questions (excellent learning questions. Don't worry about you're score the first time around; focus on learning from the explanations) and medstudy questions.

Good Luck.

 

[jdh71]

I only cared that I read the explanation of each question and that I understood it. A lot of questions come out these explanations.

I think this is key. The explanations to questions . . . and I read every single one, including the questions I got correctly thoroughly, to understand the concept(s) presented.

I've always been a good test taker so that was helpful. But I went through the newest medstudy questions once. Regardless of wether I'd gotten the question correct or not, I'd read the entire question explanation. If got the question wrong I'd put a mark by the question number in the question book. If I got the question right but the explanation was full of good stuff I wanted to revisit I put a different mark in the question book next to the question. I went back through all of the questions I got wrong and all of the explanation I wanted to re-read. I spent about 4-6 hours a day doing this, and about 6 weeks preparing this way. I didn't get more than 60% correct my first time through.

Doing it this way, I didn't think the test was overly difficult. I'm not saying "easy" because it wasn't "easy" but I thought it was a reasonable and fair test and I felt well prepared.

 

[gutonc]

Passed! Finally got around to checking it just now. I had too much else going on this week and was too nervous to check (thinking I'd just bail on my grant and clinical trial proposals if I knew I'd failed).

Honestly, I've never left an exam feeling as uncertain of the outcome as I did that one. Happy to not have to take it again for 10 years and wishing good luck to those who do.

 

[bulldog]

the dvds from acp board review pretty good. they have an mp3 version u can listen in the car.

 

[Quietus]

Was wondering if anyone has received their score breakdown yet? I passed, just curious to see my score.