Feeling like you failed

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XRT_doc

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How often do people feel like they failed the oral boards but end up passing?
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Damn near everyone. Seriously, nearly everyone I knew (myself included) thought they failed due to a certain issue, but the vast majority of the time things were fine. Easy to freak yourself out over it.
 
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By the time I got my results back, I was bargaining with God to have only failed 2 sections, so that I could condition and not repeat the entire process. I passed.

I think it's a very common phenomenon.
 
I know I did poorly on one section in particular, primarily because of bad rapport/communication. I won't be surprised if I have to come back. Trying not to think about it.
 
I didn't think I failed. I knew I failed. Like 100% knew it. Nancy Lee was gonna fail me for head and neck.

Out of my study group, 3 out of 4 of us were fully convinced we were coming back for at least one if not 2 sections.

All 4 of us passed - and even did well.

Hard as it is, just put it out of your brain for now and enjoy the few days that you have of not having a test on your horizon to think about or study for..that's the first time in over a decade, so just enjoy that feeling. If it turns out you have to come back, is what it is, but for now, you don't..so just try to enjoy the limbo. That's how I saw it at least because I was so certain I was going back that I figured I may as well enjoy the feeling of no board exam in my future for at least a few days =)
 
napoleondynamite said:
I didn't think I failed. I knew I failed. Like 100% knew it. Nancy Lee was gonna fail me for head and neck.

Out of my study group, 3 out of 4 of us were fully convinced we were coming back for at least one if not 2 sections.

All 4 of us passed - and even did well.

Hard as it is, just put it out of your brain for now and enjoy the few days that you have of not having a test on your horizon to think about or study for..that's the first time in over a decade, so just enjoy that feeling. If it turns out you have to come back, is what it is, but for now, you don't..so just try to enjoy the limbo. That's how I saw it at least because I was so certain I was going back that I figured I may as well enjoy the feeling of no board exam in my future for at least a few days =)
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Hey Napoleon

How did you know you did well? I don't remember getting an actual score (or maybe I just scrolled down and saw "pass" and didn't read anything else!).

To the OP I too thought I failed and I prayed that it was just two sections and not three ... Turned out I passed it all.

I know two people who conditioned one section each. No big deal ... they put it out of their minds and the week before the exam studied for a few hours a day then flew down the night before, took the exam from 8:00-8:55, and we're back home in less than 24 hours never to return again!
 
This is very normal. I felt like I conditioned my lymphoma section for sure, because my examiner started yelling at me 😀 Passed everything on the first go.
 
Things you don't want to hear at oral boards: "So your plan is to blind the patient? [Yes.] So after you blind the patient, then what do you do? [Dear God.]"

Passed.
 
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thesauce said:
Does anyone really know how the scoring works? Let's say you get 4 cases and you bomb one. How do they decide your fate?
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It is subjective. Depends on how badly you "bombed." If you recommend a (non) intervention that significantly harms the patient then that will result in failing score.
 
Thanks everyone, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my error wasn't fatal 😛
 
What if 80% of the cases were "zebras?" What happened to all the everyday cases I was prepared to treat?
 
RadOncDoc21 said:
What if 80% of the cases were "zebras?" What happened to all the everyday cases I was prepared to treat?
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I know, I honestly felt shocked by half the questions. The UCLA review was a cake-walk compared to the oral boards. I got a 72 from most of my examiners at the UCLA oral board review while I felt extremely uncomfortable in 3/8 of my sections and somewhat uncomfortable in 2/8 of the sections at the actual oral boards. Most of their questions were Zebras.
 
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I learned a lot studying no doubt but does anyone else feel it's a bit ridiculous this test. Other surgical specialities I am told take 20-30 cases they have done and submit them then they get tested on those. I mean do I really need peds and gyne cases or zebra NHL cases (super hard ones at that) in order to get certified. It's an amazing life disruption when you are in your first year
 
I'm pretty sure it's seen primarily as a right of passage at this point.

We went through it, so YOU need to suffer through it.
 
Mandelin Rain said:
I'm pretty sure it's seen primarily as a right of passage at this point.

We went through it, so YOU need to suffer through it.
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I hear you, I figured this was the case. But now that Ive gone through it, I just think the feeling is so empty as it has been after the other boards test too. I learned a lot of facts but what did I really accomplish? Im doing the exact same thing with or without it. And Ive neglected everything about life and caused some tension at work bc I had to get to study groups. There needs to be some attempt at further guidance focusing the exam to recognize this issue. Just an open ended learn everything is some real bull**** actually. Some real bullcrap
 
On a marginally related notice our PD recently informed the ABR that our institution will no longer be participating in the in service exam. Our faculty feel it has ceased to be of any practical use to evaluate residents. It's a small revolt, but if enough important people stand up when things become too abstract you can get change.

Of more (potential) interest to this thread, I recently heard Ed Halprin speak and he laid out a very strong case that rad oncs should be required to have additional peds training after residency to sit for peds boards. If he had his way peds would come out of the standard oral boards altogether. Won't happen, but god that would be nice.
 
ramsesthenice said:
On a marginally related notice our PD recently informed the ABR that our institution will no longer be participating in the in service exam. Our faculty feel it has ceased to be of any practical use to evaluate residents. It's a small revolt, but if enough important people stand up when things become too abstract you can get change.

Of more (potential) interest to this thread, I recently heard Ed Halprin speak and he laid out a very strong case that rad oncs should be required to have additional peds training after residency to sit for peds boards. If he had his way peds would come out of the standard oral boards altogether. Won't happen, but god that would be nice.
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The in-service exam is administered by the ACR (at $300 a resident) so no need to inform the ABR. The PD might want to be find another method to measure medical knowledge which is one of the ACGME core requirements. The ACR in-service is not the only way to do this but many programs use it for this purpose.

Having written questions for both the ACR and ABR I can state categorically that the vetting and development of the latter is vastly superior.
 
Chartreuse Wombat said:
The in-service exam is administered by the ACR (at $300 a resident) so no need to inform the ABR. The PD might want to be find another method to measure medical knowledge which is one of the ACGME core requirements. The ACR in-service is not the only way to do this but many programs use it for this purpose.

Having written questions for both the ACR and ABR I can state categorically that the vetting and development of the latter is vastly superior.
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Also the ACR in service is for internal use only meaning that the results are not reported to the ABR, residency review committee or ACGME. The ABR is only concerned with board certification and not residency education so wouldn't really care about the ACR as wombat states.

Residents should want to take the in service to know what potential deficits they have. Your PD is not really doing you a huge favor. Maybe the faculty doesn't like a half day with no resident coverage !


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Chartreuse Wombat said:
The in-service exam is administered by the ACR (at $300 a resident) so no need to inform the ABR. The PD might want to be find another method to measure medical knowledge which is one of the ACGME core requirements. The ACR in-service is not the only way to do this but many programs use it for this purpose.

Having written questions for both the ACR and ABR I can state categorically that the vetting and development of the latter is vastly superior.
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Wombat I can't agree more and I want to make sure people don't get the impression we have a rebel program. Part of my chief responsibilities is to work on exactly this issue (what to do if not the in-service which they really want to get away from). Our PD (all of our faculty) takes our education very seriously. Most of the senior people have written for both ACR and ABR and that is part of the drive behind this. They genuinely don't know what to do with this information anymore.

Radiator mike, I can't disagree with one of your points either: there is ALWAYS a few people who grumble whenever we are all out of clinic for any reason. In principle, I agree that the in service should be a useful tool for self evaluation. Its just not. For the record, I pretty much "ace" the exam every year (and that is relative because my raw score is not what I would expect from a good discriminating test) because I have really good recall on multiple choice exams. I have plenty of strengths and weaknesses but I don't know how to use this test to figure out what they are. We have debated the quality and issues of the ISE multiple times and I am happy to agree to disagree. The only point I will make is that designing a good examination that does a good job separating people (especially when they are all very smart to begin with) in a meaningful way is very hard and takes a lot of work. As wombat suggested (as have multiple other exam writers) the ACR simply does not put as much into developing the test as they need to make it a good test.
 
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Technically speaking, we were told that today might be the day we get our results back. As I stated before, I'm not too confident I got through unscathed and definitely would take having to re-take either 1 or 2 parts of the exam vs the entire thing again next year. As many have stated, there should be some correlation of what we typically see vs. everything that may be out there. I know how to refer to an academic center and trust me I will never treat a kid!
 
RadOncDoc21 said:
Technically speaking, we were told that today might be the day we get our results back. As I stated before, I'm not too confident I got through unscathed and definitely would take having to re-take either 1 or 2 parts of the exam vs the entire thing again next year. As many have stated, there should be some correlation of what we typically see vs. everything that may be out there. I know how to refer to an academic center and trust me I will never treat a kid!
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Do you know if everyone gets their scores back at the same time or is staggered, depending on whether you took on Sunday morning vs Tuesday afternoon?
 
XRT_doc said:
Do you know if everyone gets their scores back at the same time or is staggered, depending on whether you took on Sunday morning vs Tuesday afternoon?
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I think it is to be all at the same time but was also told it could be early next week. I guess the earliest I was told would be today... good luck, may the odds be ever in your favor!
 
Gfunk6 said:
The year I took Oral Boards was the first year reporting was done online via ABR portal. Everyone logged in simultaneously and the system crashed thereby delaying results.
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Pretty great website if it can't handle 120 people.
 
Conditioned... Kinda sucks but I'll take that vs the other option!
 
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