Board Certification in Psychiatry

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Doctor Bagel said:
So I'm going back and forth on feeling anxious on this test, but I'm now convinced that if I fail it, it will be because of the vignettes rather than neurology (although who knows about that one). I did the sample vignette on the ABPN site and found it thoroughly annoying and also impossible to study for.
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Oh crap, I just looked at that sample vignette too. Those might be tough...
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Red Beard said:
Oh crap, I just looked at that sample vignette too. Those might be tough...
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The ones that got me were the thing about thinking about him having a personality disorder because he blames his situation on circumstances and other people. One -- you've just met him, so I think it's a little soon to assume personality disorder stuff, and two -- honestly, everyone does that, and we all use all defenses, even immature ones, at times. And the question about what your most acute concerns would be -- I'd be more concerned about acute safety issues rather than exploring details of his fantasies in this intake. Of course this is also an area where I don't have a lot of experience. Perhaps exploring fantasies helps you explore acute risk. Another annoying part about that section -- I heard that if you get 2 out of 3 right or whatever, it's all counted as incorrect, so you could know a good deal of stuff and still miss a lot of questions. However, in spite of the freakout about this section a few years ago, it seems like it didn't stop being from passing.
 
Doctor Bagel said:
The ones that got me were the thing about thinking about him having a personality disorder because he blames his situation on circumstances and other people. One -- you've just met him, so I think it's a little soon to assume personality disorder stuff, and two -- honestly, everyone does that, and we all use all defenses, even immature ones, at times. And the question about what your most acute concerns would be -- I'd be more concerned about acute safety issues rather than exploring details of his fantasies in this intake. Of course this is also an area where I don't have a lot of experience. Perhaps exploring fantasies helps you explore acute risk. Another annoying part about that section -- I heard that if you get 2 out of 3 right or whatever, it's all counted as incorrect, so you could know a good deal of stuff and still miss a lot of questions. However, in spite of the freakout about this section a few years ago, it seems like it didn't stop being from passing.
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Agreed, and I am having a hard time seeing the justification for an adjustment disorder dx based only on the first video. He does not mention a specific acute stressor, there is no information about the duration, etc.
 
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Beachlove88 said:
boards vitals for vignettes? anything else? this exam is just leeching more money out of me
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I don't know of other sources for vignettes aside from the back of Spiegel. Neither seem to match exactly with the ABPN example either. I'm thinking this is a part of the test we can't do much prep for.
 
So to avoid studying, I think it might be useful to try to put together a list of study resources with comments about them. It seems like people use really different tools, and there's not a lot of discussion how we're studying (and what might or might not work).

If interested, you can add information and sources to this list kinda in the same way we do residency reviews and residency interview invites. I'm going to add lots of ? because there lots of stuff I don't know. Information about cost would be useful, too.

In Person Classes: ????
Kaufman?

MGH?

Beat the Boards

Others?

Online Programs:
MGH
Beat the Boards
Others?

Books:
Kaplan & Saddock: long but well written. I am not using it.

MGH Board Review: long, kinda brief on various topics, engaging writing, few questions

Kaufman Neurology for Psychiatrists: long, engaging writing, lots of questions. Seems to be routinely recommended by others.

First Aid: ? Bad reviews on Amazon, I've heard mixed reviews in real life.

Others?

Question Sources:
Spiegel Psychiatry Test Preparation: 6 150 question tests + a vignettes section with no videos. Highly recommended to me by others. Questions seem good. Detailed answers. Ordered in such a way that going through questions sequentially enhances learning. Kindle format annoying (no online access with the Kindle version, and it's harder to skip back and forth between sections in an online book format).

BoardVitals: lots of questions + video vignettes, although the vignettes don't seem to match perfectly with the ABPN sample vignette (only one video for the question series rather than a few videos, text with video shares all of video content). Questions and answers for questions are pretty mixed, and it seems like they have lots of different sources for writing questions. Seem dedicated to improving their product, and again -- lots of questions!

Psychtutorial: just started looking at this today. Seems very neurology focused. Some errors. Good explanations. ~500 questions, which is a little light. Boardvitals has ~1700 questions.
 
I am using the beat the boards videos... correlating and adding material to First Aid. I felt First Aid was written or perhaps fits my style. Not enough info on development psychiatry but I added items while doing BTB videos and Spiegel questions.
After that started doing the Spiegel questions (felt they are written well with good explanations. I am using the android app for it and works very well.)

Now trying to figure what else to do with the time we have left. Focus review questions or BoardVitals?
Is neurology in Beat the Boards enough? Doing Kaufman necessary?
The video vignettes section is something I feel most concerned about because it doesn't seem there is any place to really prepare for them.
 
psychdoc14 said:
I am using the beat the boards videos... correlating and adding material to First Aid. I felt First Aid was written or perhaps fits my style. Not enough info on development psychiatry but I added items while doing BTB videos and Spiegel questions.
After that started doing the Spiegel questions (felt they are written well with good explanations. I am using the android app for it and works very well.)

Now trying to figure what else to do with the time we have left. Focus review questions or BoardVitals?
Is neurology in Beat the Boards enough? Doing Kaufman necessary?
The video vignettes section is something I feel most concerned about because it doesn't seem there is any place to really prepare for them.
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Kaufman's a big book, so I wonder if taking it on now would be overwhelming. If you check on page 2 of this thread, there's a post by SonicHedgehog who said he/she skipped out on Kaufman and instead got all the neuro content from Spiegel and did well on the neuro section.
 
I like beat the boards questions a lot actually. Have been doing that with Speigel. barely any time to study though, just an hour or two a day. How is everyone else doing with time? Assuming they are working.
 
zolof said:
I like beat the boards questions a lot actually. Have been doing that with Speigel. barely any time to study though, just an hour or two a day. How is everyone else doing with time? Assuming they are working.
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I feel like this is the big challenge. I'm in a fellowship, so I have a little more time than I would if I jumped into a full-time attending job, but still, it's hard to do more than 2 hours a day. I stupidly signed up for some moonlighting shifts for the next two weeks (vacation coming up, and they needed coverage), so that's cutting into my time even more.
 
Just got an email from board vitals about a $20 off discount for any of their psych sections, including vignettes. Coupon code is lastminutediscount
 
Started doing BoardVitals vignettes... some of the answers are pretty obscure. Anyone else doing them? How do you find them? Are they close to the way we will find them on the exam?
 
psychdoc14 said:
Started doing BoardVitals vignettes... some of the answers are pretty obscure. Anyone else doing them? How do you find them? Are they close to the way we will find them on the exam?
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They didn't seem to match that closely with the one ABPN example -- the ABPN question had a few different videos and had video content that wasn't included in the text content. However, the questions seemed similar. From what I've heard, this part of the exam is not that nitpick and supposedly not designed to trick you. It's such a new thing, though, that there's still not that much information about it. I guess we'll see on Monday. Yikes!
 
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psychdoc14 said:
Started doing BoardVitals vignettes... some of the answers are pretty obscure. Anyone else doing them? How do you find them? Are they close to the way we will find them on the exam?
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I don't like them very much. Some questions seem ridiculously easy, and then others are really obscure. The explanations are terrible/basically non-existent. It's my least favorite of the resources I've used, but now that I've paid for it, I will try to do a bunch of them and hopefully get a few points out of it. Overall, I think the vignettes in the back of Spiegel are better written and more challenging, and certainly have better explanations for the answers.
 
I was watching the Beat the Boards video about the exam and the guy says that scoring in the upper 60s or lower 70s is typically enough to pass most years. After speaking to some people, and reading some replies online, it seems like a lot are scoring in the upper 60s or lower 70s on BTB questions or Speigel. I'm wondering if the actual test has more softball/gimme type questions than the review books? Otherwise, the pass rate should be much lower if people are averaging near the cut off right?
 
I'm so happy I came along this site. I've been nervous about this test and like the previous masochistic fellow who took on moonlighting before boards, I have done the same. I've been scoring about 70% on Spiegel. I don't like Beat the Board questions. I feel like we're all in good shape. Here is some stuff I've heard which I hope is helpful:

1. Before you had to pass each section separately, i.e. neuro, psych, vignettes. This year, they've made it so it's a total pass so if you fail the vignettes, you can still pass. Yay.
2. There is a very high boards pass rate and I know there are a lot of people that score pretty poorly on prites and still seem to pass. Our program has a 100% board rate, that's very encouraging.
3. The key factor may be fatigue this Monday. Spiegel is great but the questions are short and does not resemble a lot of the longer case-style questions on the boards that eventually get to you.

Anyways, hope this helps and good luck all.
 
I'm hoping the questions are like spiegel in other words short and fast. How else can anyone do 500 Q that fast?
 
Doing BoardVitals vignettes.. feeling good one min and blank the other... aaaahhh!!
 
So I'm done! Good luck to everyone taking it tomorrow. I kinda gave up on studying last week, which I don't regret based on today's exam. I'm guessing I can't say much because people are going to take the test tomorrow, but I didn't much care for the vignettes and thought the stand-alone questions were pretty reasonable. No technical issues with the vignettes, but they were still pretty subjective. Either I suck at clinical psychiatry or maybe they need to continue to improve that part of the test (or both).
 
Agreed Bagel,

I thought the stand-alones to be fair. I found the Vignettes to be difficult. I'm not sure I could have done much better on them with the sources I used. I think it really just depends on your skills as a test taker.

Kaufman - definitely overkill
Speigel Qbook - most my stand alone questions seemed as they were lifted from the book for both Neuro and Psych.
BTB - helpful for stand alone too but no so much the Vignettes
 
honsano said:
Agreed Bagel,

I thought the stand-alones to be fair. I found the Vignettes to be difficult. I'm not sure I could have done much better on them with the sources I used. I think it really just depends on your skills as a test taker.

Kaufman - definitely overkill
Speigel Qbook - most my stand alone questions seemed as they were lifted from the book for both Neuro and Psych.
BTB - helpful for stand alone too but no so much the Vignettes
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Yeah, I agree with your studying tips, too, except I didn't do BTB so I can't comment on that. I read all of Kaufman except the last 2 chapters, and yeah, likely not the best use of my time. The questions were helpful but, yes, definitely overkill. I think you could probably get by with just doing Spiegel. I really wish there were a better studying source for the vignettes.
 
Doctor Bagel said:
So I'm done! Good luck to everyone taking it tomorrow. I kinda gave up on studying last week, which I don't regret based on today's exam. I'm guessing I can't say much because people are going to take the test tomorrow, but I didn't much care for the vignettes and thought the stand-alone questions were pretty reasonable. No technical issues with the vignettes, but they were still pretty subjective. Either I suck at clinical psychiatry or maybe they need to continue to improve that part of the test (or both).
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I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who felt this way. I thought there was a vast difference in quality and subjectivity between the stand alone and vignette questions. So much so that I think people who fail (not that I think I did) should really get an opportunity argue their reasoning. I am sure given the subjectivity of this exam that easily 10% points could be successfully argued for just about any competent board eligible test taker.



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Did any of you write anything at the end in or anywhere else in the comments section? I wrote a bit about the subjectivity of the vignettes, hopefully Im not blacklisted...
 
OK, I had to look up if anyone felt discouraged about the boards! I am generally a good test taker but this one threw me for a loop. Those vignettes! I don't know how you could prepare for them….so subjective! I used BTB and felt it helped somewhat on the stand alones. I read some Kaufman too. Don't really think either of those helped me on neuro dramatically. I feel pretty bad about this one in general. I wonder how they grade it when a lot of those questions were subjective or so close in answer! I was stumped as well with the stand alones a lot too. Felt like I hadn't studied (or seen in residency or practice) what they were asking about! very unfair test (without giving details!)….
 
I really didn't like starting off with the vignettes. Very subjective and some of my videos were blurry and not crisp. Especially when the question was asking about appearance. I definitely had difficulty with choosing two or three options. Sucks that you don't even get some partial credit. I think that's what's most frustrating...knowing that you've at least gotten half of the question right.

I don't know how the vignettes can be worth 50%...I'd so much rather all day stand alones.

I wrote that some videos didn't have clarity and that the vignettes portion should be lessened
 
I agree with the above. There really isn't much you can do to specifically prepare for the vignettes, other than going through residency. They pretty much suck. Still, I would rather do the vignettes than oral boards!

As for the other half of the exam (the stand alone questions,) I thought it was pretty straight forward. People have said that the PRITE questions are not representative of the actual board questions, but I disagree. The question stems are mostly short (1-2 sentences) and are not terribly tricky. I would say that generally the non-vignette questions were mostly easier than Spiegal questions, and I would say that doing Spiegal was the best prep because it covered everything I saw on the real thing. Kaufman neuro is way overkill unless you are really deficient in neuro to start with, I think the neuro that you get from Spiegal covered more than everything I saw on the real deal. The neuro questions were not as nit-picky as Spiegal in my opinion, so if you knew the big facts about the different syndromes then you could easily find the right answer.

I also picked up the one month membership to psychtutorial and did their ~450 questions the two days before the exam. They were ok, they test a lot of the same stuff as in Spiegal but perhaps a little less challenging. Nice to have something to do on the ipad while in bed in the evening, but not essential.

So, for future reference, Spiegal is a must have, do it twice. Unless you've been bombing the neuro section on the PRITEs, Kaufman may be a bit overkill.
 
Does anyone know what the pass rates are on these the new boards? It seems ABPN posts it for the MOC and most of the other boards post their pass rates, but I don't seem to see it for the initial psychiatry board certification. I've always done well on the prites, was around 70% pretty consistently on Spiegel, but am afraid I messed up the vignettes. I actually went in not realizing we don't get partial credit on the ones where you have to pick 2 or 3 answers. I answered to the best on my ability but I know for sure on most pick 3, I had 2 correct answers and pretty much had to just guess the third. Looking back I don't know how much I would have done differently anyways, but now I'm pretty worried. I know if pass rates were generally pretty high I would feel a bit more comfortable.
 
Scorcher31 said:
Does anyone know what the pass rates are on these the new boards? It seems ABPN posts it for the MOC and most of the other boards post their pass rates, but I don't seem to see it for the initial psychiatry board certification. I've always done well on the prites, was around 70% pretty consistently on Spiegel, but am afraid I messed up the vignettes. I actually went in not realizing we don't get partial credit on the ones where you have to pick 2 or 3 answers. I answered to the best on my ability but I know for sure on most pick 3, I had 2 correct answers and pretty much had to just guess the third. Looking back I don't know how much I would have done differently anyways, but now I'm pretty worried. I know if pass rates were generally pretty high I would feel a bit more comfortable.
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It looks like it was 83% last year. Check on page 9, psychiatry certification results, which I think is the new exam (the one we take).

http://www.abpn.com/downloads/newsletters/2013-Annual-Report.pdf

I think I looked for 2012, and it was about the same. Yeah, the vignettes were challenging. As you mentioned, though, it's hard to know what to do differently in terms of studying for them. Most likely you (and me and everyone else here) passed, but I guess we'll know for sure in about 2 months. They really should incorporate vignettes into PRITE.
 
I think 83% was how many people that took the exam passed. One of the BTB lectures had said you needed between 69-72% to pass. I am not sure about what other sources have said.
I agree with the vignettes section they were def very confusing. I felt like they kept changing things throughout the questions being asked.
Anyone know how long it really takes to get the result? I saw somewhere somebody said 60 days.
 
psychiatry510 said:
I think 83% was how many people that took the exam passed. One of the BTB lectures had said you needed between 69-72% to pass. I am not sure about what other sources have said.
I agree with the vignettes section they were def very confusing. I felt like they kept changing things throughout the questions being asked.
Anyone know how long it really takes to get the result? I saw somewhere somebody said 60 days.
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Yeah, I heard that it's around 72% correct to pass, but I'm not sure where people are getting that information. I can't find any reference to that from ABPN.

Last year, apparently it took 63 days to get results back. The year before, it looked like people had their results by ~ Nov. 11, so again close to 2 months.
 
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I agree with you guys about the vignettes. Most of the time, I felt pretty confident on my first answer but not on my other choices with some of those "pick 2 or 3 answers" questions. However I also don't know how I could have prepared for them. The issue for me was that I could make an argument for picking this answer but also an argument for picking that one, so it seemed rather subjective.
I'd like to think that our pass rate here on SDN will be higher than the general pass rate since I imagine that not everyone who takes it makes a serious effort to prepare. 🙂
 
I hope your right. Because the vignettes were crazy. So many times I could make cases for so many different answers. Three months also for results. Crazy.
 
I am very very happy I found this thread. I am saying this as a point of reference only--not not not to brag. Every year when I took the PRITE, I got between 88 to 96 percentile and I absolutely walked out of this exam thinking I failed or that it was a very real possibility. I studied and I thought this test was really hard. It seemed overly focused on esoteric things and minutia that could be easily looked up if one had a question. I agree with all of the comments about the vignettes. They were difficult, subjective, and some of the answer choices were relatively similar with perhaps choices that were not necessarily that much better than another listed choice. Today, I got an email for a board review psych course and I'm like 'Sh**' Do you all think that means anything? I mean we just took the test. I agree the stand alone and the neuro questions seemed much better than the psych ones. I know I was over thinking some of the vignettes. Feedback very much appreciated.
 
psychiatry510 said:
I think 83% was how many people that took the exam passed. One of the BTB lectures had said you needed between 69-72% to pass. I am not sure about what other sources have said.
I agree with the vignettes section they were def very confusing. I felt like they kept changing things throughout the questions being asked.
Anyone know how long it really takes to get the result? I saw somewhere somebody said 60 days.
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I was told 12 weeks after I completed the exam.
 
Scorcher31 said:
Does anyone know what the pass rates are on these the new boards? It seems ABPN posts it for the MOC and most of the other boards post their pass rates, but I don't seem to see it for the initial psychiatry board certification. I've always done well on the prites, was around 70% pretty consistently on Spiegel, but am afraid I messed up the vignettes. I actually went in not realizing we don't get partial credit on the ones where you have to pick 2 or 3 answers. I answered to the best on my ability but I know for sure on most pick 3, I had 2 correct answers and pretty much had to just guess the third. Looking back I don't know how much I would have done differently anyways, but now I'm pretty worried. I know if pass rates were generally pretty high I would feel a bit more comfortable.
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I totally agree, I was good on like 2/3, but the third, forget it. For some questions like that, I had moments when I thought no matter how hard I look at this, I will not know the answer
 
gardilimo said:
OK, I had to look up if anyone felt discouraged about the boards! I am generally a good test taker but this one threw me for a loop. Those vignettes! I don't know how you could prepare for them….so subjective! I used BTB and felt it helped somewhat on the stand alones. I read some Kaufman too. Don't really think either of those helped me on neuro dramatically. I feel pretty bad about this one in general. I wonder how they grade it when a lot of those questions were subjective or so close in answer! I was stumped as well with the stand alones a lot too. Felt like I hadn't studied (or seen in residency or practice) what they were asking about! very unfair test (without giving details!)….
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I agree, I would say 20 percent of my test was on something related to somatoform and dissociative topics. I also felt badly about this one so don't feel bad.
 
Red Beard said:
Just finished test 4 in Spiegal, and got HAMMERED. Getting upper 60s/low 70s on the other tests so far. The tough parts for me are all the questions about obscure, eponymous neurologic symptoms/syndromes.

I was in the upper third/quarter of the class on the PRITES, and our program's board pass rate is in the upper 90s, so unless I am getting dementia I should be ok, right?
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I had the same experience as you on the PRITES and I did NOT walk out of the test feeling like I did then. I usually don't think I do particularly well---but this was really quite different for all of the reasons that everybody described
 
Red Beard said:
Would love some opinions:

As I have done successfully for every big exam so far, I am relying on doing a lot of questions to prepare for the board exam, with minimal extra reading outside of looking up confusing stuff in questions. With just a few weeks left, and a fairly busy work schedule, trying to decide what to do from here. In the next day or two I will have completed all the questions in Speigel. Overall average will be about 70%. Should I:

a) Move on to another question bank, maybe Board Vitals, or Focus
b) Repeat Speigal to try to solidify the material presented there

Thoughts?
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It's funny, going over my old Prites, I think I knew MORE earlier on!
 
Did anyone find the the questions at the end of their exams were almost too easy. If the questions are scaled and given proportionally more weight, then those questions will not affect our overall grade is that right?
 
Yes I found some questions at the end easy but the questions related to the videos and some vignettes were tough. Was hard to make a decision when we had to pick 3 answers. I did not feel good at the end of the exam. Will see when results arrive. When can we expect results this year???
 
Yes its baffling that its taking so long for the results to post. It was a computer based test, so technically the results should have been ready as soon as you clicked "Finish" .
 
any word on if this years abpn scores are out yet?
 
I don't think so. I am anxiously waiting. My profile has not changed. Hopefully this coming Friday
 
so has anyone else gotten any results? checked folios on abpn today and no exams listed nor mention of board certification.
 
Does anyone else have the "request application for initial certification" link on their folio profile under exam application and status?
 
Sorry, call me superstitious but I couldn't leave my message number at '666' so I'm writing one more.

For what it's worth the general boards came out the day before Thanksgiving last year.
 
Hmcr19 said:
Does anyone else have the "request application for initial certification" link on their folio profile under exam application and status?
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mine says that too. I hope that doesn't mean anything!
 
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