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Good luck. Just relax and be yourself, unless you are a total douche, then relax and pretend to be somebody else. By the time you read this, you are probably going to be feeling like you failed. Realize it doesn't matter any more. Either you did or you didn't and beating yourself up for silly mistakes won't change the outcome. Just go out and enjoy the fact that it is over.

- pod
 
Good luck dude. My wife is taking it now. I'm up to bat tomorrow. The energy in this plce is crazy.... Spoke to a canditate this am that got his ass handed to him... Good luck everyone.
 
Well, my babe walked into our room with a smile on her face. I hope the same for me tomorrow.
 
Took my orals today-- felt good, thank god. Had the obligatory 'doh!' moment about one question after I left, but fortunately it was not a kill shot. And now, the waiting begins-- a month til the results arrive! Good luck to all! 👍
 
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Felt pretty good when I was done, felt worse when thinking back over some of the answers, made a dumb mistake on one because I got pushed into an answer. So, now have the typical "i failed" mentality. One question is, do most people who failed "know it" when they leave?

I guess we'll see...
 
Very few people leave feeling confident that they passed. Most seem to feel that there was enough left on the table that they may well have failed. Some are convinced that they failed. I have yet to see good correlation between the way you feel after the exam an the likelyhood that you passed or failed, but I have a pretty small "n."

-pod
 
periopdoc said:
Very few people leave feeling confident that they passed. Most seem to feel that there was enough left on the table that they may well have failed. Some are convinced that they failed. I have yet to see good correlation between the way you feel after the exam an the likelyhood that you passed or failed, but I have a pretty small "n."

-pod
Click to expand...

Well, I'll say this - it sure shakes you up. I'm not convinced either way. I felt like I passed it when I left, but a little time and "review" left me shaky.
 
1goblue1 said:
Well, I'll say this - it sure shakes you up. I'm not convinced either way. I felt like I passed it when I left, but a little time and "review" left me shaky.
Click to expand...

I felt progressively more and more freaked out about it every day until I saw the passing mark online. It was easy to dwell on the minutia I missed, harder to step back and realize I'd probably 'passed' that section 3 questions earlier. Even after about 12 people on this forum reassured me that I wasn't going to fail over blowing a TPN question.

It sucked.
 
Well I kicked butt on the first case. The second session went Ok... Fumbled on one of the grab bags and didn't show adaptability on another (impossible scenerio). I'm nervous. At least I'm in south beach having a couple of mojitos.
 
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Well, I definitely agree with everyone else on here. It could go either way. I had answers for everything; not sure they were right.... I know I smoked a couple of key areas, know I missed a couple of relatively major things (literally 2 things). So I guess we'll just have to see.
I did a mock oral with one of my attendings from residency, who is a senior examiner. I floundered on whether or not to do an RSI on a baby with pyloric stenosis - really, really dumb. She said she still would have passed me based on my other answers. I missed several things on that exam, actually, and she said she would have passed me.
They say that as long as you give a safe anesthetic, don't miss something that will kill someone, and know what your various options are and how to back up your decision, you'll probably pass. Here's hoping. Going to do a lot of not thinking about it for the next month.
 
sevoflurane said:
Well I kicked butt on the first case. The second session went Ok... Fumbled on one of the grab bags and didn't show adaptability on another (impossible scenerio). I'm nervous. At least I'm in south beach having a couple of mojitos.
Click to expand...

Sounds exactly like my experience. Felt great about the first session. Fumbled a bit on the second, missed a couple of gimme grab bags, had an aggressive examiner who sighed a lot ... no idea what the final margin of my passing grade was, but I was good enough.

If you smoked the first case like me, you were probably in the 'definite pass' zone for it, so as long as you didn't make any kill errors or 'definite fail' the second session, seems almost certain that'll average out to a pass. 👍
 
Thanks pgg. That helps. I hope I passed, but I can't say for sure. The funny thing is I don't think the second session examined my knowledge as I feel it's pretty darn solid.. yet I did not have a chance to show that. Got cut off time and time again + I made a couple minute stupid mistakes. No killing errors though.
 
sevoflurane said:
Thanks pgg. That helps. I hope I passed, but I can't say for sure. The funny thing is I don't think the second session examined my knowledge as I feel it's pretty darn solid.. yet I did not have a chance to show that. Got cut off time and time again + I made a couple minute stupid mistakes. No killing errors though.
Click to expand...

Getting cut off usually means that they got what they wanted and needed to move on to something else. Being cut off is a good thing, trust me.

Cambie
 
Would you consider failure to recognize postop agitation as a transfusion reaction as a "kill error"? I picked it up eventually and managed it appropriately once I did, but when they said "pt is agitated in pacu" I went through hypoxia/hypercarbia/metabolic/meds/pain/bladder, but forgot about the transfusion in the OR.
 
drrosenrosen said:
Would you consider failure to recognize postop agitation as a transfusion reaction as a "kill error"? I picked it up eventually and managed it appropriately once I did, but when they said "pt is agitated in pacu" I went through hypoxia/hypercarbia/metabolic/meds/pain/bladder, but forgot about the transfusion in the OR.
Click to expand...

no.
Hey man... Fwiw, my wife didn't either... But she treated the problem... You r all good.
 
big congrats!
 
drrosenrosen said:
Would you consider failure to recognize postop agitation as a transfusion reaction as a "kill error"? I picked it up eventually and managed it appropriately once I did, but when they said "pt is agitated in pacu" I went through hypoxia/hypercarbia/metabolic/meds/pain/bladder, but forgot about the transfusion in the OR.
Click to expand...

I had no clue what it was, went through the whole hypoxia/hypercarbia/etc but never even thought it could be a trasnfusion reaction even though one of the examiners asked me "could it be something you've done in the or"?.
This thread has depressed me deeply and I was absolutely sure I "killed the pt" in PACU and failed.

But I passed 🙂
 
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