Neurology Boards - do I really need to study?

[DrSatan]

I've been studying Cheng-Ching since about PGY2. I created the Anki deck for that. Granted, I never learned child neurology or psychiatry. My RITE scores went from 63% to 72% to 74% (65th %ile among PGY4s). I had fallen behind in my studying with my most recent test but finally studied some of the imaging that is reused to gain some points.

One would assume this is enough to pass the boards, though I'd bet PGY4s are not preparing for RITE & thus my score is artificially inflated. I'm a good & efficient test taker. I obviously do NOT want to fail because it would be an incredibly expensive hassle, but I also do not want to waste my time studying things no longer fully relevant to me as I start my fellowship. I feel like I could just review all of my Anki decks in depth again & be okay.

Just looking for opinions.

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[Telamir]

I mean...it's a very personal choice; seems like you want people to tell you what you want to hear (that you're good/no need to study).

Personally I didn't study at all in residency and so I had to prepare at the end. I used the Mayo Clinic board review and BoardVitals (I think that was the name) and that was sufficient. I did Cheng-Ching too and altogether it was a bit overkill.

The Mayo Clinic book was pretty good. I'd recommend at least reading through that.

 

[DrSatan]

I'm not looking for people to tell me not to study. I'm looking for opinions or expetoences. I always hear the boards are easier than RITE so I'm curious if people who did well on RITE felt additional studying was unnecessary. If people did similarly to me and passed the boards without issue, I'd just continue using my Cheng-Ching anki deck. If people did similarly to me but felt unprepared, that would be good to know so I can change my study habits.

 

[Spinothalamic]

I did well on the RITE (from 69th percentile as PGY2 among all examinees to 97th PGY4) and studied for boards for about 1.5 hours. I got about 100 points higher than the passing score although I didn’t get an official percentile. It was about 60 points higher than first time test takers.

That is n=1. Personally I probably would have studied for a couple weeks if I was below the 85th percentile on RITE out of fear! But impossible to see the future is.

 

[neurodoc]

I got certified back in 1997 when they had both oral and written exams, so my comments are obviously dated. We had the RITE back then and I did well on those, but I still felty the need to study for the written exam and I'm pretty sure it helped.

One thing I can recommend is to join the AAN and get a subscription to Continuum. It provided an excellent review of clinical neurology topics that will get you through initial (and subsequent) certification exams as well as keep you current while you are practicing.

 

[Postictal Raiden]

I got certified back in 1997 when they had both oral and written exams, so my comments are obviously dated. We had the RITE back then and I did well on those, but I still felty the need to study for the written exam and I'm pretty sure it helped.

One thing I can recommend is to join the AAN and get a subscription to Continuum. It provided an excellent review of clinical neurology topics that will get you through initial (and subsequent) certification exams as well as keep you current while you are practicing.

Nowadays every residency program provides its residents with a free subscription to AAN contents including the continuum.

 

[neurodoc]

Good to hear and that's a really great deal!

 

[astrobean]

I took boards in 2020. My last RITE before that was 62%. The passing score for boards in 2020 was 247, I got a 293 and the average of first time takers was 302. I am also a good test taker and pick up information pretty easily. I didn't study for any RITEs, at all. For boards, I worked my way through Cheng-Ching for the first time, casually over maybe 2 months and then intensely for 2 weeks prior to boards. I also cherry picked various continuum chapters on things I thought would be high yield that I wasn't great at (neuromuscular, child neuro genetics, stroke anatomy). I took whatever practice boards chunks were available on the boards/aan website, I forget where they were. I was in fellowship during boards and they gave us a week off to study before hand. If I didn't have the intense week I would have probably moderately studied (every day after work kind of thing) for a month and lightly (reading cheng/ching on weekend) for a month before that. I'm glad I studied cause while I did basically average with what I would call moderate studying, it's not like I was waaaay above average with lots of room to fail. My goal was to get comfortably above passing without spending too much effort and I think that's what I did.