My diplomate status is up in 2012 and I just received my passing results from the January 2009 MOCA cognitive exam. So presumably, my certification will be good now until 2023, pending about 30 more CME credits between now and 2012.
I've been doing the ASA Anesthesia Continuing Education (ACE) program for the bulk of my MOCA CME credit requirements. There really is no better way of amassing CME credits...60 per year, though for MOCA you probably only need about 30 a year. The ACE program used to be available for about $200 for non-ASA members until they jacked it up to $800 a couple years ago. Highway robbery, but like I said, where else can you get 60 credits for bubbling in 100 dots (and now it's all on the internet, so 100 clicks).
To prepare for the actual MOCA exam, I bought a copy of Jensen's MOCA Blue. I had previously used Ranger Red for the orals, so I was familiar with Jensen's style. Now, I don't know how busy your practice is or how much of a life you lead outside of work, but for me it was important that I balance all of this with the limited time I had to study for the exam. I can't stress enough how important it is to have one central resource from which to base all or the central part of your study program. For me, I just couldn't stomach the idea of going back to all of those great textbooks sitting on the shelf... Miller, Yao, etc, etc, etc. The nature of any exam is just too hit-or-miss to study for by re-reading entire textbooks...maybe in your spare time for fun or whatever, but not for a directed systems-oriented approach to preparing for an exam.
As with Ranger Red, I found MOCA Blue to be exceedingly organized and compartmentalized to the MOCA keywords. On a first read it may seem to be very superficial and too succinct, but the sheer volume of information contained in that big binder is pretty impressive on the whole. The idea is to get through the material in a timely fashion and jog your memory and understanding of the concepts and details. I found MOCA Blue to be very good at doing just this for me. It's not one of those books that you can read and learn everything you need to know to be an anesthesiologist. It's a very directed collection of specific information that has been found to be specifically related to or tested upon in previous written exams. The upshot: I found it to be a very effective and efficient way to direct my studying. It was the only resource I used to study from. And going through it built an appropriate level of confidence in me for the exam.
Since I just received my results, I have listed my MOCA Blue binder up for sale on eBay so that maybe someone else can find it of use. It's still the current edition (2nd) that is for sale at Jensen's site.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300302246043
The exam itself was pretty similar to any other written exam you may have taken. I believe there were only 200 or so questions, of which you only have to answer 150 in the space of 4 hours. It sounds like a paltry number of questions at first, but when you think of the time as 240 minutes... roughly answering one question per minute is a pretty fast clip, especially 10 years out of residency. The whole thing is computerized, so it's easy to keep track of how many questions you've answered vs. how many questions you have left. You can also skip questions and mark them for later review.
The strategy for me was to start the exam and answer all the "easy" questions first...the ones that I knew were correct. Then at the end of this first run, see how many questions I had actually answered and how much time I had left. The thinking was, if after this first run I had already answered the required 150 questions, then great...test over. My problem was that I finished my first run with 168 questions answered, so I spent the hour I had left basically going through to find 18 questions to eliminate (quite a chore, really). Not a bad problem to have...better than having to find 18 more questions to answer out of 68 skipped questions.
Anyways, in the end I ran out of time and had 151 questions answered. I just couldn't decide which one question to eliminate at the end. Funny. But the ABA says that statistically, people who answer only the required 150 questions do better than people who answer more than that. Sounds reasonable to me.
As far as exam material goes, definitely very clinically based, unlike what I remember from the writtens. Not too much minute detail tested, but this varied widely. You know how they can seemingly be asking 4 question topics in a single question? There seemed to be a lot of OB, neuro, and peds on my exam (i think I managed to eliminate every OB question!). IMHO, some very vague questioning, like "What is the first best intervention?" or "what is the least common possibility". No copper kettle or switched vaporizor baking a cake below sea level stupid questions.
Having said all of this, I dont think I would have felt comfortable with the exam if I had gone in cold. It is a clinically-based exam, but there is still plenty of detail-seeking...details which just clinically I haven't thought about in 10 years. MOCA Blue really honed in on this kind of stuff for me, and for that I am extremely thankful.
Any other questions, just ask! Good luck on your own preparation!
