Peds board exam debriefing thread

[Socrates25]

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OK so now that this thing is over, what did you think? Obviously we cant discuss specific questions or content.....


My general thoughts are that the PREP questions give a lot more buzzwords and more details than the real test questions give you, which makes it easier on PREP to rule out wrong answers. The real test questions dont give as much details or info to rule out wrong items, which made the real thing harder IMHO.

 

[pedsreshopeful]

OK so now that this thing is over, what did you think? Obviously we cant discuss specific questions or content.....


My general thoughts are that the PREP questions give a lot more buzzwords and more details than the real test questions give you, which makes it easier on PREP to rule out wrong answers. The real test questions dont give as much details or info to rule out wrong items, which made the real thing harder IMHO.

I completely agree on that statement. I will even go so far as to say that some of those questions - many in my opinion - do not have "a right answer". Questions where two options of the 5 had evidence both for and against in equal measure. Really, the jury is still out on some of the management decisions they wanted us to make on the test...!

 

[generic]

+1 with you guys...we had a session last year when our chief residents who were post-boards gave us tips and recall this being said. He put up a PREP question as an example, then deleted several clinical details/clues and said that would be like the actual board question. SO many questions with "2 right answers!" I guess I'll get a 50%.

Also I felt like my test was unbalanced--too much of certain subspecialties which in some cases helped and some cases hurt. Seems like with ~340 questions they could make sure the mix is even.

I will say that there were some straightforward recall questions though. Not enough of them, but still.

EDIT: another thing I thought of: My X-ray images were sometimes REALLY poor quality. tiny, like low-res and overexposed. This is a pretty expensive test, can't they get some higher resolution teaching file images??

I can only hope that in the next 2 months the ABP folks are burning the midnight oil to toss out the 40 questions that had multiple correct answers! haha

 

[carriebradshaw]

1. I agree about the images...they did not add anything to the question sometimes (and I can think of 2 questions where the image actually made me second guess the answer.)
2. I had a lot of questions that I think you just need to be a pediatrician for 25 years before you would know how to answer it. I thought the hardest questions were the anticipatory guidance / development crap.
3. I felt like the same things kept getting tested over and over, and some areas weren't even touched!
4. Some questions were total gimmies! Hopefully there were enough of those to give me whatever magic number I need to pass. I cannot take that test again 🙁