Failed, improved over prior attempts, but still well below the curve (339)
Guess MKSAP and BB are not enough on their own, at least not for me. I knew all of MKSAP 17 questions very well walking into that exam. Maybe it was because I didn't sleep well the night before (probably only got about 4 hours total). Who knows. Doesn't really matter at this point.
I get one more shot at this test next year if I decide to retry because I'm 7 years out of residency and 2019 is the last year I'll be allowed to sit for it. I'm a little too upset at the moment to decide what I want to do, but I'm just not sure I want to waste anymore of my life on this test. Part of me wants to do it just to prove that I can and part of me wants to walk away from medicine completely and never look back. Despite being quite good at my job, I'm left feeling inferior to my peers over this test. And that sucks because many of my board certified peers suck at their job. Not only this, but my job security is completely gone. The hospitalist group I work for no longer staffs any hospitals that don't require boards, so I'm basically unemployed with them. I knew this was coming and I've prepared a back up by getting a job with another company, but that hospital could end up requiring boards too, so I don't feel secure there either. This is where we are as a profession. If you're not board certified, you're unemployed. I don't want to spend the rest of my life always being afraid of a change in medical staff requirements. And I don't know if I want to spend the next 10 months of my life stressing over studying for it again. I have a 3 week old daughter now (my first) and the next 10 months of her life will basically be ignored if I have to study for this again. I just don't know if it's worth it to sacrifice any more of my time on this.
Despite all of these negative thoughts, I also feel like I know I can pass this stupid thing. I still believe it's a random trivia game that I just haven't gotten the hang of yet. There's absolutely no thinking involved. You memorize and spit it back out. I do feel like if I had had enough time to go through a second set of questions other than MKSAP, I could have raised my score enough to pass. I also feel like the flash cards I made in the last week helped, so if I had done more of that sort of thing earlier, maybe it would have stuck. But, god, the thought of going through all of that again is just gut wrenching. I just don't know if I can do it. I spent so much time just sitting on my ass in front of a computer screen this year just wasting my life away. I just don't know if I can do it again.
I've got some soul searching to do over the next few weeks or so.
