In-Service Exam

[deleted4401]

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There was more urethral cancer and gastric cancer than there was prostate cancer. I don't get it ... Is this how it usually goes?
-S

 

[G'ville Nole]

Just like last year. I swear, if I had locked down urethral cancer the last two years I would have been golden.

Anyone else like the RPA question that didn't specify a disease site?

 

[stephew]

ahh brings back memories..

 

[Easterly]

Im not sure Ive ever heard of a chemodectoma before... Gotta love the med student stuff though, makes you glad you paid attention in physical exam class.

Theres always some questions thrown out. Maybe the RPA will be too. I was thinking GBM for a while there.

 

[deleted4401]

Good - I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought chemodectoma was a typo. I'm going to study the crap out of urethral cancer... they won't beat me on that next year. They'll probably just load up on penile cancer questions, instead.

I figured the RPA meant GBM, but even still, pretty lousy question.

-S
AHA - a chemodectoma is just another name for a paraganglioma. Still don't think I know where to go from there ...

 

[stephew]

relax guys. first, chemod.t. is a rare thing.
2nd, rpas should be disease specific but you can make an educ ated guess as the usual things count (age, kps, in mets, extracranial disease etc)
it always seems like the rare stuff is overrepresented (urtheral ca; sarcoma, vaginal etc). its all fair game. but focus on common stuff for real life; read other stuff for exams. the real exam is a bit more precise.

Im not sure Ive ever heard of a chemodectoma before... Gotta love the med student stuff though, makes you glad you paid attention in physical exam class.

Theres always some questions thrown out. Maybe the RPA will be too. I was thinking GBM for a while there.

 

[Adawaal]

I'm with you guys about the damn urethra questions. They were so heavy last year that I figured there'd be none this year.

Bigger question is what did people think about having all the questions mixed together this year rather than split out as distinct sections (physics, radiobiology, statistics, clinical)? Apparently it was done because people were essentially ignoring specific sections (PGY-5's not taking physics/radbio b/c they had already passed that part of boards) and this was screwing with the statistical analysis. Personally, I hated the new format.

 

[G'ville Nole]

Yeah, one nice thing we did last year was a site-by-site review, which was easy since all of the site specific questions were grouped. Pretty difficult to do that now.