Board Certification in Psychiatry

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Took it Monday, agree with sentiments above about K&S being minimally helpful (did it 3x)- except Maybe for one question on lysosomal storage. It did force me to cram the erikson/Mahler/piaget stages which showed up a few times.
BTB was invaluable I thought for the majority of psychiatry questions. Very little neuro which was disappointing given amount of time I spent reviewing. Definitely some questions that were WTF regarding quality improvement, some of the dynamic questions were straight up bizarre though most were straightforward. Probably marked 5-10 questions per block.
I felt ok about a good chunk of the stand alone, but we’ll see in 3 mos. the vignettes were mostly ok with a few nebulous questions. Stand-alone questions were much shorter in length than anticipated so finished with plenty of time. Congrats to everyone who took it this year and good luck to future test takers. so happy to be done!
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coyotelime said:
Took it Monday, agree with sentiments above about K&S being minimally helpful (did it 3x)- except Maybe for one question on lysosomal storage. It did force me to cram the erikson/Mahler/piaget stages which showed up a few times.
BTB was invaluable I thought for the majority of psychiatry questions. Very little neuro which was disappointing given amount of time I spent reviewing. Definitely some questions that were WTF regarding quality improvement, some of the dynamic questions were straight up bizarre though most were straightforward. Probably marked 5-10 questions per block.
I felt ok about a good chunk of the stand alone, but we’ll see in 3 mos. the vignettes were mostly ok with a few nebulous questions. Stand-alone questions were much shorter in length than anticipated so finished with plenty of time. Congrats to everyone who took it this year and good luck to future test takers. so happy to be done!
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exact same thoughts as you except i probably marked 10-15 per block. BTB was way more valuable then I thought they would be.
 
lockian said:
The more I think about it the more I keep thinking back to what a roller coaster of “I got this… wait, I don’t got this” the test was… and looking up what I remember of questions and realizing I got them wrong either for legitimate or stupid reasons.

*rolls around on the floor*

Ugh, I don’t want to have to study again and take it again. I also don’t want to not pass a big deal test for the first time ever.

I wonder how bad you need to be to be the 11%. It is a higher percentage than any of the steps.
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I wonder though…. with the passing score cutoff of 239/425 last year, most probably should agree that 56% is a pretty low threshold. Unless you just had no idea the entire test, it seems very unlikely that you don’t pass.
 
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DisorderedDoc417 said:
I wonder though…. with the passing score cutoff of 239/425 last year, most probably should agree that 56% is a pretty low threshold. Unless you just had no idea the entire test, it seems very unlikely that you don’t pass.
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I saw that but im confused, does that for sure mean 239 correct out of 425 or is 239 an adjusted score not necessarily the amount you get right? I was confused on that
 
DrAmazingishere said:
I saw that but im confused, does that for sure mean 239 correct out of 425 or is 239 an adjusted score not necessarily the amount you get right? I was confused on that
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I’m sure it’s an adjusted score. But I’m going to guess the “experimental” questions are not going to be the bread and butter easy ones we all clicked the answer to 3 seconds into reading it.
 
DisorderedDoc417 said:
I’m sure it’s an adjusted score. But I’m going to guess the “experimental” questions are not going to be the bread and butter easy ones we all clicked the answer to 3 seconds into reading it.
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i can think of like 5-6 were I had no idea on/never even heard about lol
 
DrAmazingishere said:
i can think of like 5-6 were I had no idea on/never even heard about lol
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If 68-73% is really needed to pass (something mentioned on BTB)… then they are dropping about 100 questions. Or the pass threshold is much lower than we are led to believe.
 
I think the exam was fair. I did BTB x2 and K&S x2-3. I thought these qbanks complimented each other well. I think the exam may have seem easier than it was. However, we will see in 3 months. I am hoping to pass. Finished with an hour to spare. Took every break.
 
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DisorderedDoc417 said:
If 68-73% is really needed to pass (something mentioned on BTB)… then they are dropping about 100 questions. Or the pass threshold is much lower than we are led to believe.
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which would make sense from the standpoint of it takes 8-10 weeks to get our scores
 
DrAmazingishere said:
which would make sense from the standpoint of it takes 8-10 weeks to get our scores
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I definitely got the sense that my last block of stand-alone questions was harder than the rest which made me think there was a decent amount of “experimental” questions in there. Like notably more questions out of the block I wasn’t sure about the answers on.
 
Congratulations to everyone that took the exam!

I took mine and Monday and when I go to the ABPN physician folios I don’t see anything in my exam history section. Do others who took the exam this week not see anything there as well?

Sorry, this is just my neurotic anxiety…..
 
calvnandhobbs68 said:
I definitely got the sense that my last block of stand-alone questions was harder than the rest which made me think there was a decent amount of “experimental” questions in there. Like notably more questions out of the block I wasn’t sure about the answers on.
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I was thinking the exact same thing! I thought maybe it was in my head/I was just tired, but I was feeling good for a lot of the exam, and then when i got to the last stand alone question block I was like woa...what is this? So maybe it really was significantly harder than earlier blocks
 
Explanation of scoring from my report last year.

Standard Score : Your raw score is transformed into a standard score so that scores are comparable from examination to examination. The mean standard score for the reference group of this examination is 300 with a standard deviation of 50. For example, a score of 350 is one standard deviation above the mean of the reference group. Most examinees' scores fall between 200 and 400. The reference group is the first-time takers from the 2017 examination.

Passing Standard : To pass the examination your standard score must equal or exceed the passing standard. The standard is based on judgments made by test committee members about the level of proficiency a candidate must demonstrate to merit certification. There is no predetermined percentage of candidates that will pass or fail the examination. This passing standard will be applied to certification examinations in this specialty until a new passing standard is set.

Standard Error of Measurement : Your reported score is an estimate of your true level of knowledge. The standard error of measurement (SEM) is a measure of the precision of this estimation. Therefore, the SEM does not imply your reported score has an error. The SEM for the standard score of this examination is 16. If a candidate who scored 330 were to retake the examination without any additional preparation (or forgetting), the expected score for his/her retake would likely fall between 314 and 346.
 
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Techmed07 said:
I think the exam was fair. I did BTB x2 and K&S x2-3. I thought these qbanks complimented each other well. I think the exam may have seem easier than it was. However, we will see in 3 months. I am hoping to pass. Finished with an hour to spare. Took every break.
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Yeah, that's what I'm concerned about... I don't trust exams that seem easy. There were definitely a lot of gimme questions but they had almost the opposite effect on my confidence in retrospect.

Now to find a way to not think about this for the next 3 months, because there's nothing to be done anyway, and if one spends the next 3 months worrying, that's not helpful for any future study efforts.
 
The exam was really hard. I used Spiegel which was ok for multiple-choice questions. Beat the boards was a waste of money and lectures were really poor. I tried this new question bank last week of the test called mypsychboard. I was only able to do the video vignettes which were really good but due to timing could not complete the rest of the Q bank. I failed twice before so I hope I pass this time!
 
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I finished very early (about 2 hours) and some other people did too. What I did not do for this test was go back to questions obsessively only to change right answers to wrong ones as much as I usually do. I felt for some questions, I either knew or did not.

One block had very short questions, which I think most could answer in 10-15 seconds. I agree that it seemed almost too “fair” and “clear,” which has me worried…
 
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I finished the last minute! Here is what I used
Spiegel: previous posts mentioned it is good but I did not find it useful except in neuro questions which did not come up much in the actual test
Beat the boards: mediocre and lacks a lot of neuroscience which is now heavily tested.
Kauman notes: Good resource especially for neuro
MypsychBoard : I loved this product! This is the closest to the actual test. They cover every category and Video vignettes good quality
Old Prite and Ninja: I did adult and child. Recent exams are closer to the test.
 
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I would also like to recommend Dramazingsqbank w/ 1 free consult phone call for the low price of $99.99. Very useful resource
 
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J ROD said:
Explanation of scoring from my report last year.

Standard Score : Your raw score is transformed into a standard score so that scores are comparable from examination to examination. The mean standard score for the reference group of this examination is 300 with a standard deviation of 50. For example, a score of 350 is one standard deviation above the mean of the reference group. Most examinees' scores fall between 200 and 400. The reference group is the first-time takers from the 2017 examination.

Passing Standard : To pass the examination your standard score must equal or exceed the passing standard. The standard is based on judgments made by test committee members about the level of proficiency a candidate must demonstrate to merit certification. There is no predetermined percentage of candidates that will pass or fail the examination. This passing standard will be applied to certification examinations in this specialty until a new passing standard is set.

Standard Error of Measurement : Your reported score is an estimate of your true level of knowledge. The standard error of measurement (SEM) is a measure of the precision of this estimation. Therefore, the SEM does not imply your reported score has an error. The SEM for the standard score of this examination is 16. If a candidate who scored 330 were to retake the examination without any additional preparation (or forgetting), the expected score for his/her retake would likely fall between 314 and 346.
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Do you know when results typically show up?
 
Nudexta said:
Do you know when results typically show up?
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If you review earlier posts in past years on this thread, seems to be that when they switched to the testing in September that people are getting them around late November and first couple weeks of December. 8-10 weeks + 4 days remain. Seems like when changes are made in the test it runs on the latter end of that span and they get the results in December.
 
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Hey all,

Just wondering if someone there’s someone who recently took the exam and could check their ABPN physician folios account and tell me what it says under examination history. I took mine on 9/13 and it says that there are no examination history on file. Is that the same for anyone else who just took the exam?

Thanks!
 
Supramarginalgyrus said:
Hey all,

Just wondering if someone there’s someone who recently took the exam and could check their ABPN physician folios account and tell me what it says under examination history. I took mine on 9/13 and it says that there are no examination history on file. Is that the same for anyone else who just took the exam?

Thanks!
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mine doesnt show it either
 
Supramarginalgyrus said:
Thank you! You did a world of good for my anxiety....
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no worries; would make me anxious too. Im assuming that will appear once we get our results? Not sure.

During my test, my proctor messed up and accidentally restarted my exam when I went to take a break. Then I had to wait outside while he fixed it, he had to log out of the exam, and log back in and stuff. Nearly had a panic attack, so i get the anxiety behind this exam, lol
 
Started a separate thread for visibility, but will copy/paste this here in case people are looking:

LINK: Beat the Boards Group Discount

I'm looking to get a discount train rolling for a group purchase of Beat the Boards -- I'm taking my general psychiatry boards next September (2022) and would like to get us all enrolled and get access by the end of October. Full price is $1100 for the year of access, but we can get up to 50% off if we have enough people. It can be a mix of any product they offer (BTB is their product for ABPN specialties, but they have the "Pass Machine" review courses / banks for almost every other specialty and any could be a part of this discount group).

The process:

  • I'll compile contact info, ideally will get >60 people though we only need 50 in order to qualify for the 50% discount
  • Once I have enough people, I'll pass the list along to BTB and they'll give us a link to sign up
  • Our cohort has a short time interval after that (usually about a week) to register with BTB
  • At the end of that registration period, everyone's payment is charged and we get access to the resources
It will take some time to build up enough people and complete the process, so have a little patience. Please share with your training programs / colleagues that are planning to use this resource. If any of you have already started to gather people / names for this, let's merge groups and get it done faster!

LINK: Beat the Boards Group Discount
 
Destined2BDr said:
I want to thank everyone for posting about their experience with the ABPN Psychiatry Certification Exam. I did K+S (Kenny and Spigel) 2017 edition 2.5x, and half of true learn for psychiatry (I have not seen anyone comment about this test bank, but some of the questions are reflective of the actual exam, however it asks specifics about dosing etc which the actual exam didn't have). I didn't do beat the boards because of the price tag. I started studying around June 2021, started off with 60% on K+S and got in the 80's in my final run throughs. I did a practice run of the actual exam about two weeks out from the date 425 questions with the vignettes etc from K+S and got around a 70%. For true learn I got 60-65% though the questions are tough. I never really did all that great on Prite etc, did ok on the USMLE step exams.

I took it on 9/13/21 and these are my thoughts:

1. Like someone else had posted a earlier in a post on 9/14/2020 the video vignettes are a lot of fun, I actually chucked at some of them.
2. Neuro was minimal though there are some tough neuro questions that I felt K+S covered, but maybe I should have reviewed Kaufman's the red book.
3. The exam is tough but it is fair, there are plenty of gimme questions.
4. It takes a while to check out and check in so be mindful of that.
5. I finished it a bit earlier 2 hours early.
6. Minimal bio stats, nothing to calculate.
7. Maybe 2-3 theorist questions.
8. Plenty of therapy questions.

Overall I felt alright coming out of the exam but it was a different feeling that I had with all the other USMLE exams for some reason, like the pressure was not at much.

~Good luck to all taking this exam!
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Was the exam similar to PRITE in style?
 
Dr.MONO said:
Was the exam similar to PRITE in style?
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I thought the neuro seemed way more straightforward than prite and was mainly high yield stuff.

The test didnt feel that similiar to prite but im not sure. Most questions seemed short and to the point but some were confusing like prite in that I had to think about what they were wanting.
 
Zyprexa100 said:
I finished the last minute! Here is what I used
Spiegel: previous posts mentioned it is good but I did not find it useful except in neuro questions which did not come up much in the actual test
Beat the boards: mediocre and lacks a lot of neuroscience which is now heavily tested.
MypsychBoard : this is the closest to the actual test. They cover every category and Video vignettes good quality
Old Prite and Ninja: I did adult and child. Recent exams are closer to the test.
Click to expand...
Is Mypsychboard a good product? I am thinking to use it instead of BTB because it is costly
 
Any good qbank or book to prep for child boards? Way too early I know, but just want to see what is out there
 
The child board takers from last year got their results in the 2nd or 3rd week of November if i am remembering correctly
 
only two more weeks roughly. Feels like forever ago we took it.
 
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For CAP test takers, I believe our scores may be posted...

Under the Certifications heading, my account now lists Child and Adolescent Psychiatry as 'Certified' but when I look under Examination History nothing is listed. Additionally, under the Continuing Certification Status 2021 - 2023 heading it has listed Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Exam Due in 2031.

Can anyone else confirm a change in their account? I'm assuming this is good news, but my neuroticism is kicking in and I don't want to befall prey to the old adage of what follows when one assumes... :rofl:
 
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nilesMD said:
For CAP test takers, I believe our scores may be posted...

Under the Certifications heading, my account now lists Child and Adolescent Psychiatry as 'Certified' but when I look under Examination History nothing is listed. Additionally, under the Continuing Certification Status 2021 - 2023 heading it has listed Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Exam Due in 2031.

Can anyone else confirm a change in their account? I'm assuming this is good news, but my neuroticism is kicking in and I don't want to befall prey to the old adage of what follows when one assumes... :rofl:
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Congrats!

I took general boards and just checked- my status says delivered, allow 12 weeks for scoring. Anyone else who took gen boards, guess were still waiting?
 
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nilesMD said:
For CAP test takers, I believe our scores may be posted...

Under the Certifications heading, my account now lists Child and Adolescent Psychiatry as 'Certified' but when I look under Examination History nothing is listed. Additionally, under the Continuing Certification Status 2021 - 2023 heading it has listed Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Exam Due in 2031.

Can anyone else confirm a change in their account? I'm assuming this is good news, but my neuroticism is kicking in and I don't want to befall prey to the old adage of what follows when one assumes... :rofl:
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Mine says the same thing and there is a certificate number. The verifyCERT doesn't reflect it, but the page was last updated 11/29. I think its legit!
 
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nilesMD said:
For CAP test takers, I believe our scores may be posted...

Under the Certifications heading, my account now lists Child and Adolescent Psychiatry as 'Certified' but when I look under Examination History nothing is listed. Additionally, under the Continuing Certification Status 2021 - 2023 heading it has listed Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Exam Due in 2031.

Can anyone else confirm a change in their account? I'm assuming this is good news, but my neuroticism is kicking in and I don't want to befall prey to the old adage of what follows when one assumes... :rofl:
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Mine says the same thing and there is a certificate number. The verifyCERT doesn't reflect it, but
DrAmazingishere said:
were you CAP as well?
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Yup, I finished the CAP fellowship.
 
Ok now the official email and score report for the CAP exam were sent. Hope you all got good news!
 
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DrAmazingishere said:
Congrats!

I took general boards and just checked- my status says delivered, allow 12 weeks for scoring. Anyone else who took gen boards, guess were still waiting?
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Mine looks the same, I worry because under "certification" it says not certified. I hope this doesnt matter.
 
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