HPM board review resources

[Summer Sweet]

I tried to see if there was an existing thread for this but didn't find one. Sorry if this topic does already exist somewhere.

What are some good resources to prepare for HPM board certification? The next certification exam isn't offered until next year, so when is a good time to start getting materials (some of the question banks seem to only be valid max 1 year)?

I recently completed a formal HPM fellowship. Because of Covid, the census at all our hospitals increased dramatically, and clinical work ended up being prioritized way more than board prep as a result. I did some practice questions with my cofellows a few months ago, and we realized there are a lot of topics on the test that our clinical practice didn't really cover. I would really appreciate advice on 1) what materials others have used/found helpful, and 2) the optimal time to start working on question banks given that the exam won't be until Nov 2022.

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[Poor Applicant!]

Hello,

Wondering if you found any reading material for hospice and palliative boards? I have only 2 months to prepare and working full time. Did you find any short coarse? or book?
Thanks

 

[Entadus]

Wow, I feel bad for the OP who never had his question answered. I was thinking to use AAHPM but I haven't really started yet. Hoping to study a decent amount this summer.

 

[SFcazam34]

I am taking my HPM board exam in Nov. I've been asking around regarding studying material. I am doing another fellowship so will try focusing on doing more of questions. It seems many been recommending any of those qbanks: board vitals, MD Anderson or AAHPM. Let me know if you have any recommendation.

 

[DragonWell]

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted here! I know it's a cliche, but time does fly once you're out there and working...

I took the Hospice and Palliative Medicine boards this year and figure I'd post on my resources and experience, in case it's helpful to anyone.

My experience was a little weird, as I finished my fellowship in 2020, scheduled my board exam, and then ended up cancelling it due to COVID. I wasn't excited about sitting in a test center in November, 2020, pre-vaccine and all. I've been working as a hospice medical director over the past two years, so have probably learned some stuff on the job, while forgetting other stuff I learned during fellowship (I'm looking at you, pediatrics...)

Lectures: I used the AAHPM online intensive board review lectures and also watched some MD Anderson lectures I found floating around. I tend to listen to lectures as I'm doing other stuff, so I found them both very helpful in this regard. They cover similar info with some differences. All in all, the MD Anderson lectures seemed a bit more comprehensive, IMO.

QBanks: I used the AAHPM offerings: Pass, and the three FAST modules. By objective standards, they're fairly terrible—not updated, ambiguously worded, and often cherry pick obscure details or focus on "guess what I'm thinking" questions. With that said, this is kind of how the board exam is , so I was glad I did all these. There were several questions on the board that were similar to the AAHPM practice questions, that I likely would not have gotten if I hadn't done these and reviewed the answers in detail. My advice is to try not to think about how much you're paying per question and just accept that everything related to the boards is highway robbery. At least you will hopefully only need to do it once. There are some "Blogs to Boards" questions floating around, which I did. I didn't find these super helpful, but they are free.

Books: I read the AAHPM Primer of Palliative Care and as much of Unipac, aka Essentials, as I could handle. The Primer has lots of helpful info and is a pretty good one-stop resource. In contrast, Unipac is probably among the worst board review resources I've seen. It's not that it's poorly written or the info isn't relevant, I just found that the presentation was diffuse and not at all focused on giving you what you need to pass the boards. I was hoping for something like the First Aid series for the Steps; Unipac is not at all like that. Instead it's long, dense paragraphs of info with a few high-yield points scattered throughout. I found the tables the most helpful part. Perhaps Unipac is actually more oriented towards giving readers a broad overview of Hospice/Palliative medicine, rather than the focused board review I was expecting.

I took a risk on a couple other books. One was the "Hospice and Palliative Medicine and Supportive Care Flashcards". These aren't actually flashcards; they're multiple choice questions with explanations. The style is slightly different than the boards, but there are literally hundreds of questions on many topics, which was helpful for interactive practice. I also purchased "Evidence-Based Practice of Palliative Medicine" late in my studying, partially 'cause it seemed like a helpful resource for the work, not just the boards. If you think about questions, they will tend to be come from areas where there is evidence to draw upon, so I did find some of this helpful, almost like a literature review.

Fast Facts is also a great resource. It's just kind of hard to know where to focus, since at this point there are so many entries. If I'd had more time, I probably would have tried to read through more of these to identify the topics that seem high yield.

The test itself covered so much material, it's hard to generalize about what is "high yield". The blueprint on the ABIM website seemed like a relatively accurate representation of the test, it's just hard to know from this where to focus and what you really need to have memorized. Perhaps that's just the nature of board exams. The resource section of the testing software does provide an opioid equianalgesic chart, as well as things like the FAST scale and MELD score, so don't waste time trying to commit these to memory.

I took the test on November 1st. Still waiting for results...

 

[DragonWell]

Board results were just released this morning—I passed! Very happy to have this in the rear view mirror!

 

[Frazier]

Board results were just released this morning—I passed! Very happy to have this in the rear view mirror!

Congrats!

 

[Entadus]

Wow, I feel bad for the OP who never had his question answered. I was thinking to use AAHPM but I haven't really started yet. Hoping to study a decent amount this summer.

Circling back to report that I also passed by a wide margin. Better than my performance on ABIM, that's for sure.

During my fellowship we had lectures every month as well as board review sessions. We did the CAPC learning modules as required homework during the year.

After fellowship I bought 2 resources from AAHPM: the essentials book set (used to be known as "UNIPAC"), and the question bank "HPM Pass 3rd Ed." I spent around 8 hours per week for 2 months leading up to the test. I read about half of the books completely, and skimmed the rest. The Essentials books demand more time, but were still worth it for me to at least cover the knowledge base. The HPM Pass questions were excellent.