Is it okay if you don't study for PRITE?

[ExcaliburPrime1]

My first go intern year I didn't study because I was doing internal medicine and didn't have time. I would basically sleep as soon as I got home.

This year, while busy, is not so bad, but I simply do not feel any urgency in doing it. Am I creating problems for myself in being nonchalant about this? Does anyone really care?

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[clausewitz2]

My first go intern year I didn't study because I was doing internal medicine and didn't have time. I would basically sleep as soon as I got home.

This year, while busy, is not so bad, but I simply do not feel any urgency in doing it. Am I creating problems for myself in being nonchalant about this? Does anyone really care?

Did you get a disastrous score last year? Does your program give rewards or resolve scheduling conflicts based on PRITE score (a thing some places!) If not, it is totally irrelevant.

 

[ExcaliburPrime1]

Did you get a disastrous score last year? Does your program give rewards or resolve scheduling conflicts based on PRITE score (a thing some places!) If not, it is totally irrelevant.

Thanks, my overall score was average last year compared to my fellow interns and all interns. No rewards/demerits that I am aware of. Thanks for the reply!

 

[randomdoc1]

I never studied for it. Did horribly a couple times and ok the other two. I remediated twice. I think the importance is that it is said to correlate with board scores. Anyways, I studied like heck for the boards and did quite well. That's all that matters in my opinion.

 

[Dharma]

It's not ok if you do

 

[ara96]

I never studied for it. Did horribly a couple times and ok the other two. I remediated twice. I think the importance is that it is said to correlate with board scores. Anyways, I studied like heck for the boards and did quite well. That's all that matters in my opinion.

What was remediation defined as in your program?

 

[TeaAndCrumpets]

I don't ever study for the PRITE; I prefer to use it as a gauge of how well I know the material thus far, and what areas I might need to study more

 

[randomdoc1]

What was remediation defined as in your program?

They just had me go over the questions I missed, and type up explanations for why the right answer was right and the wrong answers were wrong. It was pretty time consuming, but I don't think my department really cared since we generally had a 100% pass rate anyways and they've always had people remediate.

 

[MacDonaldTriad]

You don't need to study for PRITE, but you need to study.

 

[NickNaylor]

I don't ever study for the PRITE; I prefer to use it as a gauge of how well I know the material thus far, and what areas I might need to study more

This has also been my strategy.

As long as you do SOME kind of reading to learn during your clinical work then I don't think there's necessarily any need to study unless you're receiving consistent feedback that your knowledge base is horribly deficient. Even then, though, the PRITE is just a means to an end (i.e., assessing your knowledge base) not an end in itself (i.e., that doing well on the PRITE somehow indicates you are well-trained). Study because you need to learn, not because you need to do well on the PRITE.

If you're anxious about the impact of PRITE scores on... whatever, then talk to other residents in the program and see if they play any meaningful role in your training. In our program they don't, but they might be significant in yours.

 

[ara96]

They just had me go over the questions I missed, and type up explanations for why the right answer was right and the wrong answers were wrong. It was pretty time consuming, but I don't think my department really cared since we generally had a 100% pass rate anyways and they've always had people remediate.

I actually think that is a good strategy to help people understand topics better. But just for clarification purposes, there is no Pass for the Prite? I don't see that there is a passing score, you mean 100% pass rate for Boards?

 

[randomdoc1]

I actually think that is a good strategy to help people understand topics better. But just for clarification purposes, there is no Pass for the Prite? I don't see that there is a passing score, you mean 100% pass rate for Boards?

Yup, for boards! I only remember on the prite having things broken down in percentiles and if you fell below a certain percentile, then it was grounds for remediation. In my program, there were no perks if you did well and the worst that could happen was remediation. Actually, now that I think about it more, I was SUPPOSED to remediate the second time I did bad, and the director of my class checked me off as having remediated, but I don't remember him actually asking me to do anything the second time around. I think he just looked the other way and figured the boards is what matters in the end and it's my bad if I bomb that.

 

[Monocles]

I think my program gives a giant chocolate bar to the top scoring person on PRITE..? so yeah there's incentive

 

[WingedOx]

Does your program give rewards or resolve scheduling conflicts based on PRITE score (a thing some places!)

Ewww. This is how you know you have a crappy chief resident.

 

[clausewitz2]

Ewww. This is how you know you have a crappy chief resident.

Yeah, I am glad that the extent to which my program cares about PRITE is that I got roped into teaching a review session and so our housestaff chair bought me a beer.

 

[HarryMTieboutMD]

Different programs do different types of reinforcement (positive vs negative) to get residents to perform better.

As has been said above, one simply should not study for the PRITE (ok, maybe reviewing some basic stroke syndromes or things you may have forgotten if you are a PGY4 but most of that is med student level on the exam anyway). In your spare time you should be reading about your patients/latest literature/current issues in psychiatry, etc.

In general the PRITE is a worthless exam with poor psychometric properties and horribly written questions (I think they even let residents write the questions!). However, we live in a standardized test obsessed culture (which for SAT/MCAT/Steps 1 and 2 makes sense but in service exams are horrible ways of assessing medical knowledge at the resident level, the PRITE likely being the worst offender of all). If you are a decent resident, however, despite how much of a piece of $h*t this exam is, you should do fine

 

[ryerica22]

What a crappy exam! I'm sure even if I spent all year studying, I would never get these questions right. Truly shameful that Psychiatry has to make such tricky exams for residents. My friends in ED and medicine have good questions on their in service exams. I am assuming the Boards are probably filled with garbage questions too. Totally lame.

 

[splik]

most specialties have crappy in-service exams, the PRITE is actually a lot better than many specialties (for example neuro where they have hardly any clinically relevant questions). The PRITE does not represent the boards (the questions of the latter are of better quality except perhaps the video vignettes) and the content has become increasingly divergent to represent the ACGME milestones (which have no relationship to the ABPN exam content). The main divergent area is neuroscience which is not tested at all on the boards but now makes up over 20% of the PRITE. It's not a tricky exam, it's suppose to help you with your learning (though unfortunately the neuroscience people have hijacked it and the other psychiatrists were too embarrassed to own up to the fact they didn't know any of this stuff either). I always scored well on the PRITE so would challenge the idea that it is a tricky exam. it's only tricky if you don't know the answers. i do think it was a mistake to try to map the PRITE onto the ACGME milestones for anything other than medical knowledge, to reify the DSM, and to put so much neuroscience in, all of which are fairly recent changes.

the vast majority of what is on the PRITE can be found in Kaplan and Sadock, Gabbard, and Stahl

It is cheating to study for the PRITE. It is supposed to be a learning tool for you to know what topics educators expect you to know about, and for you to gauge your own learning. It is deliberately at a higher level than the boards with that in mind, and contains questions varying from med student level to PGY4+ level. of course you are not expected know it all as a junior resident (though some do), but by your PGY4 should do well enough to meet the higher level medical knowledge milestones

 

[deleted736562]

The problem with the PRITE is that it feels like random trivia questions. Very little thought involved. Even the NBME shelf exams was more intellectually interesting. It all comes down to the fact that it's a cheap (free?) exam and no one has the time to make good questions ala Steps or shelf exams.

 

[Information Underload]

I think it makes perfect sense to study for the PRITE. Do such with the Kenny & Spiegel question book, and you'll find that not only will your PRITE scores go up but that studying for the boards will be easier and that you will know the stuff when it actually comes time to study. I will say that it helped getting letters or recommendation from my attendings, and many of them did reference my scores on standardized examinations when it came time to apply for jobs and when looking at fellowship.

 

[OldPsychDoc]

...It all comes down to the fact that it's a cheap (free?) exam ....

Neither.

 

[WingedOx]

Yeah, PRITE may seem like a random clusterf-ck, but so did the actual boards when I took them.

If you think you're frustrated now, wait until you have to take the 'multiple answer' sections of the ABPNs.

 

[DisorderedDoc417]

During and after the prite today I found myself wondering why I went into psychiatry.

 

[clozareal]

Our program director specifically told us NOT to study for the PRITE because it's supposed to gauge the education we're getting from our clinical rotations as it is right now. That being said, it'd be super interesting to see how PRITE scores change when new curriculum changes are implemented.

 

[DisorderedDoc417]

Our program director specifically told us NOT to study for the PRITE because it's supposed to gauge the education we're getting from our clinical rotations as it is right now. That being said, it'd be super interesting to see how PRITE scores change when new curriculum changes are implemented.

That’s interesting. Unfortunately for my test result GWAS and Theoretical psychology are not usual topics for fodder. But who knows, guess there is next year!

 

[ExcaliburPrime1]

Without revealing anything about this year's PRITE, I have to say that it seemed even more random and "unfair" than it was last year. I did okay last year but this year... let's just say that it felt like the questions where I knew the answer were very few, maybe 10-20%. The rest was a mix of complete guessing ("hey I remember the name of this brain structure, why not?!") and "I can eliminate this one choice, but wait, maybe this is the answer... I guess I can't eliminate anything." Anyway, it was a disaster, but one that is finished until next year.

 

[DisorderedDoc417]

Without revealing anything about this year's PRITE, I have to say that it seemed even more random and "unfair" than it was last year. I did okay last year but this year... let's just say that it felt like the questions where I knew the answer were very few, maybe 10-20%. The rest was a mix of complete guessing ("hey I remember the name of this brain structure, why not?!") and "I can eliminate this one choice, but wait, maybe this is the answer... I guess I can't eliminate anything." Anyway, it was a disaster, but one that is finished until next year.

I’m not sure I would have even been proud to do well on this exam. It absolutely isn’t the content I’m hoping a psychiatrist would have in mind if treating a family member or loved one. Like you say, next year!

 

[Shikima]

Don't bother with in-service exams. Waste of your time and the dept's time too. Same with ppt lectures.

I'd rather see some kind of socratic questioning method to determine knowledge and clinical acumen where everyone can learn at the same time using the person's time in the hot seat towards teaching/learning.

 

[NickNaylor]

There was certainly a lot of focus on minutiae and things which - from a purely clinical perspective - aren’t all that important in the day-to-day practice of psychiatry. Most people in my program felt the same way when they walked out from the room.