My Experience/Retaking Oral Boards Advice.

[Sonny Crocket]

Perhaps you could suggest a better way to do things than the combination of passing residency and written and oral boards.

I am American and did residency in the United States. I passed my boards and now live and work as a consultant Anesthesiologist in Norway (wife is Norwegian ).

There is no board exam here. The residency is 5 years total. Let me tell you, the quality of consultant (attending) is very high. We also work pre-hospital and run the icu. More peri-operatively. Makes you think in a different way.

My point is that the board exam is not necessary to produce quality consultants.

But this is the way the game is played in the US and there is no way avoiding it. So no, I can’t suggest a better way because it will never happen. Hope you have a great day bro.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Mman]

I am American and did residency in the United States. I passed my boards and now live and work as a consultant Anesthesiologist in Norway (wife is Norwegian ).

There is no board exam here. The residency is 5 years total. Let me tell you, the quality of consultant (attending) is very high. We also work pre-hospital and run the icu. More peri-operatively. Makes you think in a different way.

My point is that the board exam is not necessary to produce quality consultants.

But this is the way the game is played in the US and there is no way avoiding it. So no, I can’t suggest a better way because it will never happen. Hope you have a great day bro.

I would argue that not every resident graduating from every residency in the country should be board certified. There are some bad residencies out there and some people that slide by.

 

[2Fast2Des]

I am American and did residency in the United States. I passed my boards and now live and work as a consultant Anesthesiologist in Norway (wife is Norwegian ).

There is no board exam here. The residency is 5 years total. Let me tell you, the quality of consultant (attending) is very high. We also work pre-hospital and run the icu. More peri-operatively. Makes you think in a different way.

My point is that the board exam is not necessary to produce quality consultants.

But this is the way the game is played in the US and there is no way avoiding it. So no, I can’t suggest a better way because it will never happen. Hope you have a great day bro.

Did you do a fellowship to be able to work there?

 

[nimbus]

I would argue that not every resident graduating from every residency in the country should be board certified. There are some bad residencies out there and some people that slide by.

And most of those bad residents from both good and bad residencies pass their boards and become board certified.

 

[Mman]

And most of those bad residents from both good and bad residencies pass their boards and become board certified.

not the ones I have seen

 

[Sonny Crocket]

Did you do a fellowship to be able to work there?

Nope

 

[AnesThrowaway]

I thought I would give everyone an update since posting this thread.

I thankfully passed on my second attempt.

After mulling it over, I decided to not take a course.

In the months before the exam, I did about 150 mock orals with friends, colleagues, and mentors.

I went through UBP again once but the more mock orals that I did, the more I realized that UBP wasn’t very helpful or high yield. It is way too verbose, goes into specific detail that is rarely asked, and the answers are often way too conservative. It is a good review of the type of cases that often come up on the exam and provides a semi-acceptable knowledge base. However, I would not recommend it as the main source for this exam (my downfall the first time).

I supplemented my knowledge deficiencies with Yao & Artusio, OpenAnesthesia, and UpToDate (the UpToDate sections on anesthesia are absolutely fantastic and I would not have discovered this without another member of these forums)

In the week before the exam, I committed the Stanford emergency manual to memory and ran through anesthesiaconsiderations.com

However, the absolute gold for this exam is the old ABA practice exams floating around on the internet. These don’t come with answers but doing them out loud and then looking up things that I didn’t know was extremely helpful. The same questions come up over and over on these practice exams and I learned how to answer them quickly and concisely. This paid in dividends on exam day. Absolutely by far the best and most helpful thing that I did.

After two years of heartache, I am so glad that I can put this all behind me.

Thank you all for your advice.