Oral boards

[dean9]

Ugh.

I feel terrible. One question, I got completely wrong. Not blinding but wrong, wrong, wrong.

There's a rumor that one applicant committed suicide after the orals but passed. Not ready to jump from a great height but ugh.

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[clayito]

I'm in the same boat, as I'm fairly confident I failed. I thought I was prepared, but in 2 of my 6 rooms I feel like I did very poorly. I was too slow and got bogged down, lost my train of thought as I started to panic a bit, and it snowballed on me.

Let's put it in perspective, though: it's only a test. If I have to re-take it, so be it. We get 3 tries before getting sent back to take the written. And the pass rate the 2nd time around is still pretty high for the orals. The key is if we fail, assess why we think we failed and work on those areas.

I know at least one very intelligent individual who scored quite well on the WQE then failed the oral. He worked on his strategy and passed the oral exam on try #2. It stinks to retake it, but worse things happen in life, much worse. We'll be fine.

dean9, with all that being said, I hope you find a "pass" on that notice in a few weeks.

 

[4ophtho]

I finished the exam feeling the same way, as did my coresidents. Lets just hope we find ourselves on the right side of the bell curve.

Do the examiners tell you you got a question wrong, or that you blinded or killed someone with your diagnosis or treatment?

 

[DrZeke]

I heard they provide no feedback. But they let you keep going and going if you're not on the right track.


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[JMK2005]

the examiners have a job to do. they have to get a minimum number of cases in the allotted time. on some of the cases where I wasn't doing well, they will have you move on. just don't say anything crazy in terms of treatment.

i remember i got a few questions completely wrong but still passed. forget it and wait until the results come out.

 

[dean9]

I finished the exam feeling the same way, as did my coresidents. Lets just hope we find ourselves on the right side of the bell curve.

Do the examiners tell you you got a question wrong, or that you blinded or killed someone with your diagnosis or treatment?

WRONG ANSWER
The case that I definitely got wrong was the last one. The answer I gave would have resulted in not effectively treating the problem.Then upon leaving, while entering the elevator, it dawned on me what was the answer. I knew lots of detail on workup, management, etc. and would have given good answers.

EXAMINER MOVING ON
There were also some that I said some stuff, answered a few questions and they moved on. Those are iffy though I didn't lack confidence in my mind that I knew what was going on.

One question was way too straight forward that I am suspicious that I didn't answer it correctly even though I thought I did.

GRADING
It would be good if they explained how they grade it. Assign a score to each room/session (probably)? Some details, I think I got no points and would have saved my time if I didn't mention it.

I wonder if one passes if they gave decent, slightly superficial, but correct answers to 6 scenarios in each room and a completely wrong answer to a 7th question that was not fatal or blinding.*****

5, in each room and I would guess that you fail.

7 correct, some too superficial and my guess is that you pass.

The other possibility is you need to do this (see above *****) and can also fail one room.
Another possibility is that you must get 36 correct cases (works out to 6 in each room) and must pass in 5 of 6 rooms, which means the average person would get 6-7 correct in each room because it is hard to just meet the criteria of 6 in every room and not flunk only 1 room.

ALMOST AN AUTOMATIC FAIL
So nervous, I almost said I would enucleate but bit my tongue and didn't say it. Weird since in the beginning, I blurted out "the only rare exception to enucleate would be....." then a minute later was asked the usual treatment and almost blurted out "enucleation!". Instead, I stammered and gave a very incomplete answer.