Practical Board Exam

[Chris_Topher]

Just wanted to see if anyone out there was familiar with the AOA's (NBOME's) plan to require a practical, hands-on portion of step 3 boards. This is in the planning stages right now and is scheduled to come on-line for the class of 2004. (the NBME is is the process of implementing the same, FMGs already do this)

As the AOA design stands right now, this would be administered out of a central city or 3, and the student would be required to get themselves to that city (at their own expense), stay in a hotel (at their own expense) and participate in this test that is expected to cost $800-1200/administration.

No question that it is a good idea to assure a baseline level of communication, analysis, and clinical savy among osteopathic physicians, but is this the most (cost and logically) efficient way to do this? We have excellent phsical exam testing rooms with videotaping and microphone equipment right on our campus.

Don't forget, in the AOA this is the year of the intern/resident, and last was the year of the student!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Pilot]

Chris

I asked one of our instructors (Dr. John Glover) about this just last week. He is the AOA president-elect or something like that (I have never been one to pay much attention to titles). He told me that if the Class of 2004 does have to do a lab practical it will be on an experimental basis initially and will not count in our COMLEX scores.

I addressed the exam with him since I was concerned about how the scoring would be conducted. At our school the lab practical grading is a crap-shoot. If you get an easy instructor you will score high, and a hard instructor will barely pass you. This has been a big point of contention among my classmates, since many feel they have been screwed out of the grade they thought they deserved. I have gotten lucky so far, but I am bound to get screwed soon.

Dr. Glover said that the scoring system that would be implemented is a huge concern for the COMLEX, and he is not sure how it will be handled. He said that one idea is that the Lab Practical will be Pass/Fail. He also wasn't sure whether the Lab Practical would be implemented as soon as 2004 due to the training of instructors (in the scoring system) and cost involved. He said that the estimated cost for the first administration of the Lab Practical is 4 million dollars.

My hope is that the Class of 2005 will be the experiment, and we will be left alone.