Awards for resident in training exams

[Animal Mother]

I'm curious what percent of programs offer awards. It seems some residency programs offer recognition for top performers, but others seem to put very little emphasis on these exams.

Does your program offer an award to the top performer(s)?

Does your in-training exam give a national percentile or at least give a mean and std to estimate your performance relative to others nationally?

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[mvenus929]

Our program did not offer awards based on the ITE, but did do other awards each year for 'best' resident in each class at graduation.

Our ITE report did include a national percentile, as well as a prediction on whether we would pass boards based on how many people who previously earned our score passed on first attempt.

 

[FalconSlice]

I'm curious what percent of programs offer awards. It seems some residency programs offer recognition for top performers, but others seem to put very little emphasis on these exams.

Does your program offer an award to the top performer(s)?

Does your in-training exam give a national percentile or at least give a mean and std to estimate your performance relative to others nationally?

In my experience in talking with my colleagues in other specialties, this is also specialty dependent along w/individual program dependent. In my specialty, the in service training exam is heavily emphasized. There are many programs that do give awards (or sometimes maybe just recognitions/acknowledgements) if one kills the exam. Also, we get percentiles etc.

FS

 

[operaman]

We generally didn’t put too much emphasis on the ITE when I started. We did have some cash awards for higher scores. I forget the details but basically if you were top percentile nationally you got some money, though it had to be used for something educationally adjacent.

Like my iPad that I still use for “reading.”

Most people used it for such things. Some purchased books or put it toward additional loupes or headlights or something.

 

[guytakingboards]

If I recall correctly, the resident with the highest ITE score got their name on a plaque, a short recognition at Graduation and a line in their CV. Nothing more.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

We do absolutely nothing. Your score is yours, and that's it. I'm honestly surprised that programs make a big deal of this.

 

[Saddleshoes]

ALL of our residents are above average!

 

[dozitgetchahi]

We do absolutely nothing. Your score is yours, and that's it. I'm honestly surprised that programs make a big deal of this.

My IM program also did nothing. My understanding was that the ITE was supposed to be used to guide self study, not be made into yet another medical penis measuring contest.

 

[gynObMD]

We do absolutely nothing. Your score is yours, and that's it. I'm honestly surprised that programs make a big deal of this.

I am faculty at an OBGYN academic program. In OBGYN, there is an association with the CREOG (ITE) score and passing the first part of board certification (written boards). So, many programs in OB place a strong emphasis on the score to motivate the residents to study. If a program has a lower written board pass rate, it reflects poorly on the program. Thus, one will find that many programs have some type of carrot/stick model to help motivate better ITE scores and thus achieve higher pass rates for boards.

 

[dozitgetchahi]

I am faculty at an OBGYN academic program. In OBGYN, there is an association with the CREOG (ITE) score and passing the first part of board certification (written boards). So, many programs in OB place a strong emphasis on the score to motivate the residents to study. If a program has a lower written board pass rate, it reflects poorly on the program. Thus, one will find that many programs have some type of carrot/stick model to help motivate better ITE scores and thus achieve higher pass rates for boards.

I am faculty at an OBGYN academic program. In OBGYN, there is an association with the CREOG (ITE) score and passing the first part of board certification (written boards). So, many programs in OB place a strong emphasis on the score to motivate the residents to study. If a program has a lower written board pass rate, it reflects poorly on the program. Thus, one will find that many programs have some type of carrot/stick model to help motivate better ITE scores and thus achieve higher pass rates for boards.

That information exists for IM also, but the ABIM also explicitly states that programs aren’t supposed to be making a big deal out of it and that the scores are mostly supposed to be used for self study purposes. As I understand it, there has been semi-serious discussion at times about not even making the scores available to programs to review.

 

[clausewitz2]

At my program, my reward for coming in top 3 in the program in our ITE was to be voluntold that I would be conducting ITE review sessions for a couple of weeks prior to the exam. Incentives may have been misaligned.

In psychiatry at least we also have the institution of Mind Games, i.e. every residency program gets to designate the top three people from their program who take a nationally standardized mini-ITE together. If you score well enough your team gets to go the APA conference for free and compete in a quiz-show type format. So a pretty nifty reward, if and only if you are an enormous nerd.

We got breakdowns of our performance in each major subject area vis a vis the rest of the residency program with numerical ranks, the rest of the people in our program in our year with numerical ranks, and nationally by percentile.