Ophthalmology course for WQE

[OphthoGal2023]

I am out of residency and for various reasons I postponed taking boards until after fellowship, I need to stick to one resource for q bank, I plan to do BCSC, one book (Friedman review of ophthalmology) and I want to stick to one course Wills vs San Antonio vs. Illinois Eye vs. Lancaster? I am not sure which one to pick, any recommendations are welcomed.

Thank You

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[Doc320]

I would not stick to one question bank, such as only the BCSC or only Friedman. That is a recipe for disaster. Do as many questions as possible. OphthoQuestions is a popular choice.

As far as courses, Lancaster is the best for starting residency and the worse for board preparation, in my opinion. I believe it depends on your current situation. San Antonio is the cheapest and the best if you don't know much. Wills is slightly more esoteric but still mainstream ophthalmology. Wills is significantly more expensive than San Antonio, which also has cheaper hotels. (San Antonio also has the Drury Inn within walking distance of the course's hotel. Drury has free breakfast and dinner so you can have most of your food covered) Illinois Eye is a grueling 80 hours long. I like courses. I might even do two. Wills + San Antonio is difficult due to the scheduling but Illinois Eye + Wills or San Antonio is possible.

 

[Bluesclera]

The Osler Course is nice if you have time to review all the online videos. Otherwise using Ophthoquestions and doing the question bank 2 times should suffice. I found using a task list app like ticktick (or apple notes) that you can have on your phone and computers. It's nice to make reference "cards" that I would routinely review during work or after hours or if I saw a patient with a similar issue. Other people use anki but I didn't like to see the large number of cards amassing/ it was anxiety-provoking for me.

 

[Gonio5]

The written boards (WQE) results are out. 73.9% passed. That means 26.1% failed. I cannot believe that more than 1 of 4 graduating ophthalmology residents are incompetent. (They are not incompetent). 80.2% of first time takers passed so almost 20% failed.

The good thing is that the ABO now tries not to write really ridiculous questions that cannot be answered even if it were an open book test with unlimited time (according to rumor)

The bad thing is that many people who failed on the first attempt find it very difficult to pass. Slightly less than half of repeat takers of the most recent WQE passed. I'm afraid that OphthoQuestions is no longer the magic silver bullet that it used to be. Legend has it that when it first came out roughly 10 years ago, it was a godsend. Then everybody used it and the ABO tried to write new questions to replace those that nearly everyone got right. That is not to say OphthoQuestions is bad. It just means that you have to use it to avoid a guaranteed failure but using it is not a guaranteed pass anymore.

In the mean time, nurse practitioners can become board certified at the drop of the hat and change specialties that they call themselves within a few months.

The board says that about 10% of ophthalmologists are not board certified.

If the WQE pass rate is 80% for first time takers and 50% for subsequent taking of the exam, after 4 attempts, 97.5% will pass and 2.5% will not pass (0.2 x 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5). That is about 12-14 residents per year. Then there are the few who won't pass the oral exam before the 7 year deadline passes. After 7 years from the end of ophthalmology residency, one is banned from being board certified for life (unless one is a foreign trained ophthalmologist, then it's 7 years from when they applied to take the exams).

 

[Slide]

The written boards (WQE) results are out. 73.9% passed. That means 26.1% failed. I cannot believe that more than 1 of 4 graduating ophthalmology residents are incompetent. (They are not incompetent). 80.2% of first time takers passed so almost 20% failed.

The good thing is that the ABO now tries not to write really ridiculous questions that cannot be answered even if it were an open book test with unlimited time (according to rumor)

The bad thing is that many people who failed on the first attempt find it very difficult to pass. Slightly less than half of repeat takers of the most recent WQE passed. I'm afraid that OphthoQuestions is no longer the magic silver bullet that it used to be. Legend has it that when it first came out roughly 10 years ago, it was a godsend. Then everybody used it and the ABO tried to write new questions to replace those that nearly everyone got right. That is not to say OphthoQuestions is bad. It just means that you have to use it to avoid a guaranteed failure but using it is not a guaranteed pass anymore.

In the mean time, nurse practitioners can become board certified at the drop of the hat and change specialties that they call themselves within a few months.

The board says that about 10% of ophthalmologists are not board certified.

If the WQE pass rate is 80% for first time takers and 50% for subsequent taking of the exam, after 4 attempts, 97.5% will pass and 2.5% will not pass (0.2 x 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5). That is about 12-14 residents per year. Then there are the few who won't pass the oral exam before the 7 year deadline passes. After 7 years from the end of ophthalmology residency, one is banned from being board certified for life (unless one is a foreign trained ophthalmologist, then it's 7 years from when they applied to take the exams).

I can certainly believe a small but significant amount of residents having a knowledge gap after residency. Many residencies do not value their residents' board passage rates and will leave them on their own to study and prepare for them. Most of the first time test takers were affected by the pandemic during their residency in some way, so I wonder how much that had to play in part with this.

Even though it's unpopular I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. A good argument can be made that training quality needs to be handled and finished before the residents graduate, but outside of billing and insurance reasons, I see the boards having two goals: a semi-legal way to ensure that board-certified physicians have a level of competence and knowledge that isn't seen as a joke like the NP mills, and the boards being the last "gate" to prevent a bad ophthalmologist from being out in the wild. Yes it sucks but looking back at it, I do think preparing for it made me a better physician and I realized how much some of my knowledge gap had gone out the window after fellowship.

 

[hello lady!]

I can certainly believe a small but significant amount of residents having a knowledge gap after residency. Many residencies do not value their residents' board passage rates and will leave them on their own to study and prepare for them. Most of the first time test takers were affected by the pandemic during their residency in some way, so I wonder how much that had to play in part with this.

Even though it's unpopular I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. A good argument can be made that training quality needs to be handled and finished before the residents graduate, but outside of billing and insurance reasons, I see the boards having two goals: a semi-legal way to ensure that board-certified physicians have a level of competence and knowledge that isn't seen as a joke like the NP mills, and the boards being the last "gate" to prevent a bad ophthalmologist from being out in the wild. Yes it sucks but looking back at it, I do think preparing for it made me a better physician and I realized how much some of my knowledge gap had gone out the window after fellowship.

Agreed 100%

Every year we get an onslaught about how unfair/corrupt/etc the ABO is for making us do the written and oral examinations. It's usually posted by someone (or a group) of people who failed and want to roll down the echo chamber together. Even though your stress level is 10/10 right now, just take a few days to mentally recover. You will be ok and you will do fine.

 

[Gonio5]

Every year we get an onslaught about how unfair/corrupt/etc the ABO is for making us do the written and oral examinations. It's usually posted by someone (or a group) of people who failed and want to roll down the echo chamber together.

The ABO has improved the exam which shows that it wasn't so good before. Therefore, if there were past complaints, some of them may have been valid. According to rumor, the WQE no longer has ridiculous questions that couldn't be answered even if it were an open book test, short of reading individual journal articles. The oral exam sample video is no longer a ridiculous example that didn't mimic the actual exam at all. The oral exam now has two examiners so a single examiner cannot excessively harass (or excessively help) a candidate unchallenged.