How many people go to the Parties during orientation and after test?

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DermViser said:
Yes, certain specialties apparently feel the need to turn the screws even tighter, as if the residency isn't hard enough - Surgery, OB-Gyn I believe, also have oral exams.
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Now now I know how much you like to complain about Surgery and OBG but we are far from the only ones that require an oral exam:

According to the source I have, anesthesiology, emergency medicine, allergy and immunology, radiology, plastics, ENT, Uro, Ortho. and psychiatry are some that still have an oral board exam. I've heard that orthopedics even has to do it for their board recertification.

Source: http://www.certifacts.org/timelimited.html#3
 
You don't have to necessarily to go every orientation event, but just being nice and making some conversation with your classmates won't hurt. You'll probably lean on them and vice versa through these four years.
 
Winged Scapula said:
Now now I know how much you like to complain about Surgery and OBG but we are far from the only ones that require an oral exam:

According to the source I have, anesthesiology, emergency medicine, allergy and immunology, radiology, plastics, ENT, Uro, Ortho. and psychiatry are some that still have an oral board exam. I've heard that orthopedics even has to do it for their board recertification.

Source: http://www.certifacts.org/timelimited.html#3
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Woohoo! I think I might be safe.
 
wjs010 said:
You don't have to necessarily to go every orientation event, but just being nice and making some conversation with your classmates won't hurt. You'll probably lean on them and vice versa through these four years.
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How is PCOM GA? I almost went there. Cute little school, but like a lot of DO schools the 3rd and 4th years were really shady.
 
EMDO2018 said:
How is PCOM GA? I almost went there. Cute little school, but like a lot of DO schools the 3rd and 4th years were really shady.
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Haven't really started yet but it seems fine. You mean rotations? I've heard they are much better now 🙂
 
Just gonna put it out there now: Ignore any post I make on January 2nd, after 4pm.
 
Winged Scapula said:
Now now I know how much you like to complain about Surgery and OBG but we are far from the only ones that require an oral exam:

According to the source I have, anesthesiology, emergency medicine, allergy and immunology, radiology, plastics, ENT, Uro, Ortho. and psychiatry are some that still have an oral board exam. I've heard that orthopedics even has to do it for their board recertification.

Source: http://www.certifacts.org/timelimited.html#3
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I'm just saying that OB-Gyn and Surgery are already hard enough as it is. I'm almost 100% sure Allergy/Immunology does not have an oral board exam.
 
DermViser said:
I'm just saying that OB-Gyn and Surgery are already hard enough as it is. I'm almost 100% sure Allergy/Immunology does not have an oral board exam.
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Yes which is why I listed the resource because I wasn't sure it was 100% accurate.

My point about the oral boards is that there are plenty of other rigorous residencies tracks which require them as well,
 
Winged Scapula said:
Yes which is why I listed the resource because I wasn't sure it was 100% accurate.

My point about the oral boards is that there are plenty of other rigorous residencies tracks which require them as well,
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And they shouldn't require them either.
 
Winged Scapula said:
Why not?

Not that I necessarily disagree with you, just wondering what your thoughts are.
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Bc residency is hard enough in those fields: # of hours, surgery logs, evaluations, ABSITE scores, boards, high attrition in that specialty, but apparently all that isn't enough? +pissed+
 
DermViser said:
Bc residency is hard enough in those fields: # of hours, surgery logs, evaluations, ABSITE scores, boards, high attrition in that specialty, but apparently all that isn't enough? +pissed+
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By that standard, easier residencies should then have more difficult certification exams then.

The US is hardly alone in requiring oral exams; many of the Commonwealth countries require them and not just for the "hard" specialties. Want to be RCPS credentialed? You'll have a written and oral exam as well as an OSCE.
 
DermViser said:
Bc residency is hard enough in those fields: # of hours, surgery logs, evaluations, ABSITE scores, boards, high attrition in that specialty, but apparently all that isn't enough? +pissed+
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I think our current methods of evaluating and signing off on residents' competency is a total joke. It's total lip service and box checking.

The oral boards are at least rigorous.

I do wonder if the ultimate extension of some of the current research on evaluating surgical skill via video (NEJM article last year, pending research by Caprice Greenberg out of Wisconsin) is an objective skills evaluation as part of the board certification process.
 
Winged Scapula said:
By that standard, easier residencies should then have more difficult certification exams then.

The US is hardly alone in requiring oral exams; many of the Commonwealth countries require them and not just for the "hard" specialties. Want to be RCPS credentialed? You'll have a written and oral exam as well as an OSCE.
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True. Or none of them have any oral exams.
 
southernIM said:
I think our current methods of evaluating and signing off on residents' competency is a total joke. It's total lip service and box checking.

The oral boards are at least rigorous.

I do wonder if the ultimate extension of some of the current research on evaluating surgical skill via video (NEJM article last year, pending research by Caprice Greenberg out of Wisconsin) is an objective skills evaluation as part of the board certification process.
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Almost any ACGME mandate is box checking. Heck that's med ed in a nutshell. That's why students think acing the Surgery shelf and getting good Ms-3 evals means they'd make great surgeons. By that standard, I'd make a great surgeon (I won't).
 
DermViser said:
Almost any ACGME mandate is box checking. Heck that's med ed in a nutshell. That's why students think acing the Surgery shelf and getting good Ms-3 evals means they'd make great surgeons. By that standard, I'd make a great surgeon (I won't).
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Agreed. which is why I don't have an issue with the oral exam.
 
southernIM said:
Agreed. which is why I don't have an issue with the oral exam.
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My point is that the box checking shouldn't be happening. It's different when you have ALL th box checking AND the oral exam.
 
southernIM said:
Agreed. which is why I don't have an issue with the oral exam.
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The problem a lot of people have with the oral exam ( from what I've heard) is the fact that most of the people administering the exam are total jerks and seem like they don't want you to pass. Obviously I can't speak from first hand but that's what I've heard.
 
RJGOP said:
The problem a lot of people have with the oral exam ( from what I've heard) is the fact that most of the people administering the exam are total jerks and seem like they don't want you to pass. Obviously I can't speak from first hand but that's what I've heard.
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That's a totally inaccurate characterization of the examiners, from what I've heard both from people taking and people administering the exam
 
RJGOP said:
The problem a lot of people have with the oral exam ( from what I've heard) is the fact that most of the people administering the exam are total jerks and seem like they don't want you to pass. Obviously I can't speak from first hand but that's what I've heard.
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I find that hard to believe.
 
southernIM said:
That's a totally inaccurate characterization of the examiners, from what I've heard both from people taking and people administering the exam
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Ismet said:
I find that hard to believe.
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Well, that's what I've heard from people, mainly general surgeons. Whether it true or not I don't know, but I trust the people who've told me that.
 
RJGOP said:
The problem a lot of people have with the oral exam ( from what I've heard) is the fact that most of the people administering the exam are total jerks and seem like they don't want you to pass. Obviously I can't speak from first hand but that's what I've heard.
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This. I believe that's why IM removed their oral exams (a long long time ago). I could be wrong on specifics though.
 
Ismet said:
That sucks and is rather sad. I'm assuming the people administering the exams are more senior physicians, why would they want you to fail?
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They're hard-*****. I don't think they say they're going to fail u from the beginning.
 
The fact is that the General Surgery oral ("Certifying") examination was, in the last, highly subjective and reputed to be filled with examiners who asked and did whatever they wanted. Surely some of the stories were apocryphal (Hiram Polk urinating in the hotel room bathroom, with the door open, while asking the examinee questions, etc). But it was true, from personal experience that some of the "rules" were ignored; examiners could and would ask you whatever they wanted and the scoring system was rather subjective (which is the nature of such an exam).

But when the failure rate exceeded 30% a few years ago, the ABS was faced with either admitting that their training programs were failing to prepare surgeons for the oral examination or that the exam needed to be changed. Insider info tells me that examiners are now provided with a notebook of scenarios from which candidates at tested; they can no longer go off on a tangent of their choosing as the questions are decided ahead of time. There is less emphasis on Vascular Surgery (as most recent GS grads cannot even get privileges to do Vascular without a fellowship anymore); there is no longer a dedicated Trauma/CC room etc, And the scoring system is supposed to be more equitable.

I have mixed feelings about the oral exam; I'm not sure it weeds out the dangerous surgeon and I have a hard time accepting that 30% (of those who finished residency in good standing and passed an 8 hr written exam) aren't qualified to practice and it's clear that some people just don't do well on these exams but yet are bright and capable surgeons.

So I have heard the same rumors all of you have and have admitted here that one of the examiners was an dingus to me (but I passed his room) but I really think the board is trying to respond to recent criticisms.
 
RJGOP said:
Well, that's what I've heard from people, mainly general surgeons. Whether it true or not I don't know, but I trust the people who've told me that.
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And I trust the roughly two dozen graduated chiefs and new faculty at my program who have talked to me about their extremely recent experiences taking the oral exam.

As WS said, I've heard all the horror stories/urban legends of the past. The ABS has made a lot of changes.
 
southernIM said:
And I trust the roughly two dozen graduated chiefs and new faculty at my program who have talked to me about their extremely recent experiences taking the oral exam.

As WS said, I've heard all the horror stories/urban legends of the past. The ABS has made a lot of changes.
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Well, maybe they've made changes since, I believe the physicians I talked to took the exam somewhere between 2006-2009, so yeah, it's not impossible for them to have made changes in the last five years. But I find it hard to believe the Physicians in question, some of whom are my family members, would so grossly exaggerate.
 
It certainly does depend on "who you get" and there may be an element of embellishment to the tales of woe about the exam, akin to "I walked both ways uphill in the snow". It's such a brief anxiety provoking experience that it's not unusual that some would have negative, if inaccurate, recall of the event.
 
Winged Scapula said:
It certainly does depend on "who you get" and there may be an element of embellishment to the tales of woe about the exam, akin to "I walked both ways uphill in the snow". It's such a brief anxiety provoking experience that it's not unusual that some would have negative, if inaccurate, recall of the event.
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Right.

I would also venture to guess that the conversations the prior poster was having with people were more prone to "woe is me" embellishment.

The conversations I've had are in the context of getting advice on how to do well on the exam, detailed discussions of question types, making a mental framework for how to approach the topics, etc. These conversations tend to be, by their nature, more grounded. I would say I've heard the explicit phrase "They're not looking to fail you" quite a few times.
 
I've also heard the refrain "they're not looking to fail you" many times and agree. I believe that while the ABS wants to be perceived as having a rigorous certification process they are not looking to intentionally fail a certain number of candidates (as I've mentioned before the Royal College of Surgeons has a much more dismal failure rate than the ABS).

Surgeons are not known, by and large, to have poker faces. Thus, if you don't perform well on a certain scenario and the examiner is disappointed/disgusted, it may reflect on their face, impacting the candidates perception of the experience, even if they have passed the exam, That's why they tell you to "move on" when the next scenario is presented; it can be hard not to dwell on your previous answers.
 
Guess I couldn't stay away.

I'll mark that as yet another thing I've failed at in my life.

In any case, I'm back to the books again, I just wanted to say that nobody fails STEP1, while lots of peeps fail Pulm Pathophys, so Pulm is harder.
 
touchpause13 said:
Pretty sure lots of people fail step 1
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yeah i'm gonna second that one... go to usmle forums if you don't believe people fail ark. However I hope you realize a lot of people that would fail are protected from failing basically by in house exams that are essentially mini step 1s that students must pass a month or two before they take the real thing. This basically makes the schools look better as only the students that are ready or close enough to pass that exam are the ones that end up taking step 1 then.
 
US MD fail rates are below 5% from what I've seen. My class had no failures this year and a ton of high scores
 
Psai said:
US MD fail rates are below 5% from what I've seen. My class had no failures this year and a ton of high scores
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I mean 5% is still a lot if we're talking the sheer numbers of it. Did your class have an in-house "pretest" like what I mentioned in my post?
 
Hmm we did take a nbme exam about 2 months before the real thing They told us that it was a diagnostic for us to gauge where we are, I haven't heard of anyone being forced to pass it to be eligible to take step 1. Everyone took the test from what I know although some people might have taken extra time to study, I have no idea about that. I did notice that a few people started clerkships late.
 
Arkangeloid said:
Guess I couldn't stay away.

I'll mark that as yet another thing I've failed at in my life.

In any case, I'm back to the books again, I just wanted to say that nobody fails STEP1, while lots of peeps fail Pulm Pathophys, so Pulm is harder.
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Stupid comparison.

If your class all took 5-8 weeks and dedicated it to full time studying for your pulm exam I'm pretty sure they'd have a very low failure rate
 
Look on the bright side, pass or fail, the after test parties are still awesome 😀
 
KnuxNole said:
Look on the bright side, pass or fail, the after test parties are still awesome 😀
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I know right, I get to train and golf and then afterwards get free entertainment hearing all the dumb **** my classmates did. Love it
 
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