Oral board results are back

[semajjsj]

Good luck everyone!

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[narcusprince]

Passed Big shout out to PGG and MTGAS2B you guys have been very helpful and awesome mentors in this process of board certification.

 

[Alfonsegalil]

Whohoo! I passed! Good luck everyone!

 

[MallampatiOne]

Passed! What a relief! I felt like I failed that exam when I got over the initial shock.. So glad that I can now focus on other things in my life. Congrats to all!

 

[CambieMD]

Congrats to everyone who passed. To those who failed the sky is not falling.


Cambie

 

[Idiopathic]

this thread is awfully quiet compared to previous years/exams

 

[Sonny Crocket]

Passed. Used board stiff 2 and did 5 mock orals.

 

[pgg]

this thread is awfully quiet compared to previous years/exams

Fall session usually has fewer takers than spring, doesn't it?



Congratulations to everyone who passed.

 

[cincincyreds]

Congrats to all the diplomates. Now you can focus on recertifying in 10 years.

 

[RickKane]

Passed!!! I have to put in a plug for the Ho course. Did the 4 day Crash right before boards and don't think I would have had a snow balls chance without it.

 

[Lightwand]

Passed. Best feeling ever!

 

[Plead the Fifth]

I know Ho gets a lot of hate on here but the 4 day crash course was money. An intense 4 days of way too detailed material but it helped organize your thought process when approaching the stems. Would I have passed without the course? Possibly. But well worth the investment and improved state of mind when I was riding the elevator at the Ritz

 

[CambieMD]

I don't think that Michael Ho gets a lot of hate on this forum. The issue that I have with review courses is that most candidates would be successful without review courses. I failed the orals on my first attempt. I actually went to the Ho course twice prior to being laughed at during my exam. Yes, one of my examiners laughed at me. I passed the orals on my second attempt without much fanfare. The difference for me was focused practice with a pit bull-like examiner. I was not comfortable with being questioned and being put on the spot. A weekend with Ho will not fix that. Extremely shy people and those with pronounced accents have difficulty with the orals. A friend told me to study for my exam in a public area where people where walking around and talking. This really helped with my level of concentration.

I am not saying that going to a review course is a waste of money, always. Those who have struggled with the orals need to work to pinpoint their areas of weakness and work on them. The written report includes areas of deficiencies. Film yourself speaking. Analyze the video with someone who would give you honest feedback. Focused consistent practice is much higher yield than a review course.

ps

How do I get trophy points.

 

[narcusprince]

I did 4 mock orals. Read anesthesiology board review and board stiff. No tie on board date Also I work in a academic department. I went over board cases at church in my head while sitting in the front row. Its a test of are you safe. In the end I was lucky.

 

[Mman]

I'm also not sure what the point of taking a course for it is. Just do some mock exams with various attendings at your residency program. Hopefully your program has some actual examiners. There is no rocket science to passing. The written exam shows you have the book knowledge, you just need to learn to keep calm under direct fire from the examiner and clearly and calmly state the reasoning behind your decisions without getting flustered.

By the end of any exam, you will have said "I don't know" several times. It's OK. Nobody fails for saying it. Calm, cool, and collected is the way to pass the exam, just like you should be in real life when the stuff hits the fan.

 

[Sonny Crocket]

Mman is spot on. I think we overhype this thing. But it is a big deal. For some of us, this will be the last big exam we take. Of course there is MOCA but that is a lot easier from what I have heard. A lot of people think that by taking courses they are maximizing there chances of passing. I did not take a course but read a bit of Ho's book. Very good book but WAY too detailed. You just do not need to know that level of detail for the exam. The questions are straight forward. You have to have thought some classic board situations through and have verbalized it. They will question a lot of what you say but you just have to have a reasonable answer for it. I really liked the board stiff 2 book even though it is perhaps outdated.

 

[pgg]

I took the Ho course and thought it was helpful. My institution paid for my travel, hotel, and course fee though ... I might have been more critical if I'd had to cough up $3K for it all. I don't think I really got $3K of value out of it, but I got something out of it.

It was good to watch other people take the public exams and flounder around. It was reassuring in a way, made me feel better about my chances. It was also useful to see what kind of answers were pounced on, how straying from the "answer the question and STFU" strategy opened them up to attacks from the examiner, how nonverbal things like fidgeting and extra 'ums' made them look bad. And it was a few days of forced out-loud practice with strangers. But most of the other attendees' on-stage screwups were knowledge deficiencies. They would mostly do reasonable things, but get sunk by not knowing how to interpret a blood gas or boning up ACLS.

And then Ho would spend 45 minutes teaching the class how to read a blood gas or talking about amiodarone dosing for pulseless vtach. Really, a LOT of the course was devoted to reviewing facts and correcting knowledge deficits because that's where most attendees were weak.

I also followed the 2-day course with the 2-day "must know cases" session. My gripe about that session was that we were mostly paired off with other students. You get yourself a bad partner and you may as well be at home by yourself talking into the air. I went to the course with a residency classmate and we mostly paired off together ... but hell, we could've done that at home.

I passed first time through, and for that I'm grateful. Mostly, I know I worked hard and feel I deserved to pass. But there's some luck and randomness to the exam. I know too many smart people, good anesthesiologists who failed their first attempt. To an extent the review course salesmen prey on the anxiety this creates. I think it's a rare candidate who'd be a failure, if not for a weekend with Ho turning him into a pass. I bet most people who fail aren't making glaring, ridiculous kill errors. I bet they fail by small margins. If you think a review course might help smooth your edges a bit, maybe it's worth it.

 

[RickKane]

I thought the Ho course was worth the money...maybe I would feel different had I failed but it was certainly not the only factor. I went back to my favorite source Faust and then did a bunch of exams with the creator of M5 (written board question bank). The guy is a genius and really helped me out. I'm trying to convince him to make a less expensive alternative to Ho or Nielson. Anyway, my recommendation would be to revisit the sources that got you through writtens whatever it was.... Baby Miller, M/M etc then practice TALKING. Just coming off a pain fellowship this was especially important for me because talking about anesthesia wasn't second nature anymore. A course gives you some structure for the last few days when I may have just spend hours freaking out and staring aimlessly at pages of some textbook. It also gives you a couple more solid practice exams.

 

[chocomorsel]

Passed as well. Studied at home on my own using Ho's old 2003 Text. Good book although has lots of grammatical errors and needs updating. Thank you Lord. Thought I had failed. Woohoo. And to think of all the drama they put me thru in residency. So glad that's over.

 

[Jay K]

Passed as well. Studied at home on my own using Ho's old 2003 Text. Good book although has lots of grammatical errors and needs updating. Thank you Lord. Thought I had failed. Woohoo. And to think of all the drama they put me thru in residency. So glad that's over.

To my knowledge, it's still the same text from 2003 that's being offered - a decade old text and definitely some wrong typos that could really screw you up if you didn't look it up.