ATSU-SOMA board preparations

[BK201]

Hey guys, so im directing this to anyone who has attended ATSU-SOMA or who knows a lot about their program. I was wondering how prepare you felt about the boards when you first took them. Did you feel that the program adequately prepared you for the exams, or was there a lot of make-up studying you had to do on your own. Don't get me wrong, i know that studying for the boards is a huge effort on the individual students part, but the studying can be harder or easier based on the reinforcement of the material taught to you.

Anyways i was just curious! Thank you for your help!

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[jphwki82]

Hey guys, so im directing this to anyone who has attended ATSU-SOMA or who knows a lot about their program. I was wondering how prepare you felt about the boards when you first took them. Did you feel that the program adequately prepared you for the exams, or was there a lot of make-up studying you had to do on your own. Don't get me wrong, i know that studying for the boards is a huge effort on the individual students part, but the studying can be harder or easier based on the reinforcement of the material taught to you.

Anyways i was just curious! Thank you for your help!

I cannot speak for ATSU-SOMA, as I know nothing about their program. Medical school pre-clerkship curriculum goes beyond level one material. Most students will be focusing on level one, but the curriculum at your school is definitely going to go beyond only teaching you level one material. Their job is to prepare you for clerkships, and to become a physician. There was plenty of material that was geared towards clerkship preparation. While I have not taken my level one yet, I have been studying with board books and q-banks. I can tell you that there was level one material that was not covered, and there was material that will be relevant for clerkship that was emphasized more. It is not going to be the school's job to prepare you for an exam. Their job is to prepare you to be a competent physician. I'm not saying that pre-clerkship doesn't prepare you for boards, but a lot of that responsibility fall on you. As you have already pointed out, learn the material they teach you and you should be fine. However, it will be your job to prepare for the COMLEX. Teaching students by focusing on a test would be doing your medical education a tremendous disservice. It is the job of test prep companies to prepare you for an exam. Self directed learning will become a skill you will need to acquire to be successful in medical school and as a future physician.

 

[Whiskeypunch]

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[jphwki82]

Thanks for the lecture but the reason he asks (I imagine at least) is because ATSU SOMA has a unique structure where you do 11 months of in class work and then move to a community health center for the final 3 years. You only have one faculty member at that facility and you watch lectures remotely. You also become involved with the clinic in your second year.

This is obviously a unique approach to osteopathic education and merits some amount of anxiety over adequate preparation for boards.

It'd be interesting to hear from some ATSU students who have taken their boards and can give feedback, OP you might have better luck in the school specific threads.

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/archive/index.php/t-738394.html

I was just trying to give some general advice, and the "lecture" wasn't directed at you. No one forced you to read what I wrote, and there was no need for the sarcasm. My point would still apply to ATSU, as you will have to study in your second year for boards. I copied the link from 2010 thread discussing boards at ATSU SOMA.

 

[jphwki82]

Also here is an article from a third year at ATSU SOMA that discusses this at length. http://studentdoctor.net/2010/05/a-better-method-for-medical-education/.

 

[SLC]

I'm currently a 1st year at SOMA, so I can't speak personally to the way the curriculum prepares one for the board (yet). But ironically, we had a panel of upperclassmen speak to us just the other day and this topic came up.

Obviously everyone studies independently or though a prep-course for the boards. That goes for every student at every medical school in the country. SOMA is no different. But what the panel did say was that everyone seemed to do just fine on the boards, that the people who struggled passing were the people that were struggling passing school at all. And that your performance in class seemed to fairly accurately predict your general performance on the boards. People in the top 10% of the class pretty much scored at/near/above the 90th percentile on COMLEX etc.

All our professors are required to register to contribute questions for the board examinations, part of the gig of teaching at SOMA (not sure if this is a universal requirement at all schools). And students have singled out some of our professors as having exam questions that were exactly like those on the boards.

We have talented faculty; our Path professor is the Maricopa County (Phoenix metro area) medical examiner; our main pediatrician is very well respected in his field; pharmacology professor is also with Mayo (I think). Our clinical faculty are all extremely good. No complaints really.

The scheme based curriculum really doesn't give you any excuses for not scoring well on clinical questions either. I'm very pleased overall with my education so far.

Finally, the 1+3 curriculum only increases my confidence for boards. I'm learning the bulk of the basic and clinical sciences this year, then next year I'll spend the year putting them into practice. How could that be bad for prep?

Hope that helps, and if this thread is still going next summer, I'll have a lot more to say I'm certain.