Preparing for next ITE during PGY2

[greensleeves]

Hey everyone

So, I didn't do as well as I would've liked to on my intern ITE. Just like everyone else, I did zero preparation, and did not take the exam seriously. However, I'm aware the PGY2 ITE is pretty representative of how we do on the actual ABIM exam and thus want to prepare for it as much as possible.

From now until my PGY2 ITE (which is in about 7 months), how would you guys recommend me preparing? Here is my general study plan:

1. Doing a few MKSAP questions a night
2. Reading one MKSAP 17 Book every month


Other than that, I find it hard to focus on this exam since intern year is full of so many inpatient rotations. I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks guys!

-greensleeves

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[Raryn]

Hey everyone

So, I didn't do as well as I would've liked to on my intern ITE. Just like everyone else, I did zero preparation, and did not take the exam seriously. However, I'm aware the PGY2 ITE is pretty representative of how we do on the actual ABIM exam and thus want to prepare for it as much as possible.

From now until my PGY2 ITE (which is in about 7 months), how would you guys recommend me preparing? Here is my general study plan:

1. Doing a few MKSAP questions a night
2. Reading one MKSAP 17 Book every month


Other than that, I find it hard to focus on this exam since intern year is full of so many inpatient rotations. I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks guys!

-greensleeves

Studying specifically for the ITE is a fools game. That said, studying for *life* and for care of your patients is perfectly reasonable. Shift your focus, and if it improves your ITE scores so be it. By the time I did my PGY2 ITE I think I had done around a third of the MKSAP 16 questions (while on electives) and made sure to read on a patient or two most days. I had also seen a crapton of patients, which really did help. Doing questions with my medical students was also an easy way to force myself to get some done, and gets you some kudos for teaching.

Board Basics (which comes with MKSAP) is also a stellar resource. Pretty much every line is gold. I opened the Board Basics app and just looked at a random section occasionally.

 

[HelpPleaseMD]

Hey everyone

So, I didn't do as well as I would've liked to on my intern ITE. Just like everyone else, I did zero preparation, and did not take the exam seriously. However, I'm aware the PGY2 ITE is pretty representative of how we do on the actual ABIM exam and thus want to prepare for it as much as possible.

From now until my PGY2 ITE (which is in about 7 months), how would you guys recommend me preparing? Here is my general study plan:

1. Doing a few MKSAP questions a night
2. Reading one MKSAP 17 Book every month


Other than that, I find it hard to focus on this exam since intern year is full of so many inpatient rotations. I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks guys!

-greensleeves

best way to prepare is by teaching your medical students. look up something about a patient you admitted and see the clinical presentation / workup suggested by a source like uptodate. talk about that with your students. repeat 3x a week and in 7 months time you will know a lot more than you started. personally i find reading mksap incredibly useless.

 

[dyeguy21]

You realize its a correlation right? This means that people who do well on their 2nd year ITE also usually do well on the boards. It does not say, people who study for the ITE and do well in 2nd year will automatically pass boards. The reason most people do well on 2nd year is that they have done an intern year and have honed their differential diagnosis skills. Thus their knowledge based increased organically. I have to mirror Raryn here, study for the boards. Read MKSAP, do a few questions now and again, study your patients, etc. The ITE score will come up in due time.

Also, if you take ITEs relatively blind it will give you a measure of how much you truly know. If you do worse, you will be motivated to study, if you do well you still need to study, but perhaps not as intensely.

 

[Gastrapathy]

Depends on how poorly you did. Less than 35%ile correlates with board failure. If that's the case, take a board review course now. Use the materials going forward to prepare. The ITE is irrelevant. The boards are not.

 

[Raryn]

Depends on how poorly you did. Less than 35%ile correlates with board failure. If that's the case, take a board review course now. Use the materials going forward to prepare. The ITE is irrelevant. The boards are not.

Take a board review course as an intern? What are you smoking? Seems like a total waste of time and money.

Focus on the boards as a third year. Focus on your patients and keeping your head above water intern year.

 

[Gastrapathy]

Sure. Stay in your program's crosshairs. Total waste of money.

 

[Raryn]

Sure. Stay in your program's crosshairs. Total waste of money.

It's true, most programs use the IMITE to identify residents who may need a bit more assistance with formulating a study plan... but it's expressly forbidden to be used for purposes of promotion AND it's confidential to the point that it cannot be shared when you're applying for fellowship. So unless your program is significantly more malignant than most, the "crosshairs" are fairly benign. This isn't surgery, where half the programs publicly post your ABSITE scores and all of them share it with prospective fellowship programs.

 

[IMreshopeful]

Sure. Stay in your program's crosshairs. Total waste of money.

The most our program does (large academic inner city) is shake a finger and say "make a study schedule dammit" and then goes back to work. I certainly hope yours didn't do more than that

 

[Gastrapathy]

Thats what happens to good performers. For folks that are marginal, a bad ITE score is one more nail in the coffin. You just need to stay out from under the microscope. I don't think we were malignant but confirmation bias is real. Its a small investment of time and money.

 

[Crayola227]

Thats what happens to good performers. For folks that are marginal, a bad ITE score is one more nail in the coffin. You just need to stay out from under the microscope. I don't think we were malignant but confirmation bias is real. Its a small investment of time and money.

QFT.

DREADED MICROSCOPE

Just cuz they say they don't use it in such and such way... let's get real, once the info is in their brains can they really control how it affects their decisions however unconsciously? A great liked resident in every other way likely this will slide. Anyone else, this could very well be a nail in coffin.

Part of the milestones eval looks at knowledge base, and while maybe it wasn't supposed to be, my ITE was mentioned in that report, and since milestones ARE used to make promotion decisions, well then by a certain logic....

That said, I would think working hard, reading on patients, strats above, and whatever you might do for board study (which shouldn't be left to your last year neccessarily although shouldn't be done uber intensely before then from what I'm told) should be sufficient but I'm just parroting advice I see.

TLDR
don't believe what anyone says your ITE can hurt you
I don't think you need to go balls out on it, however if you must to get a decent score then do it
advice in this thread and what to do to study looks good to me

 

[dozitgetchahi]

It's true, most programs use the IMITE to identify residents who may need a bit more assistance with formulating a study plan... but it's expressly forbidden to be used for purposes of promotion AND it's confidential to the point that it cannot be shared when you're applying for fellowship. So unless your program is significantly more malignant than most, the "crosshairs" are fairly benign. This isn't surgery, where half the programs publicly post your ABSITE scores and all of them share it with prospective fellowship programs.

But there are some IM programs that use the ITE like this. We hear horror stories about it all the time on this board.

Much like yours, my program is extremely 'low stress' when it comes to the ITE - but not every program is like this.