this is all stuff that you are expected to learn or be taught during your residency training.
I would retort with TLP's post on the MOC:
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/04/the_maintenance_of_certificati.html
I find myself sharing this opinion more. After doing PRITE day 1 this week, I'm reminded of how bizarre of a test it is and how completely not relevant to day-to-day practice a majority of the exam is/was. The main praise I recurrently hear about PRITE - both here and from leadership in our program - is essentially that it predicts success on the board certification exam. Having never taken that exam, I don't know if that's because the content on the PRITE matches that of the exam or if the correlation exists simply because those that do well on tests do well on tests recurrently. If the former, though, I guess the next question would be just how relevant the knowledge on the board certification exam is to day-to-day clinical practice. That is an open question as I don't know.
Mind you, taking the PRITE doesn't matter all that much to me. One way or another I will be busy during our protected didactic time, so whether it's sitting in lectures or taking the PRITE that time is already gone. I spent approximately 0 minutes studying for the PRITE and relied on what I learned (or didn't learn) this past year to take the exam. I am not arguing for or against the idea of an in-service exam in general as I think the idea is, on its face, a good one.
However, if the only saving grace of the PRITE is that it predicts performance on board exams, then I have to wonder - based on the content that I've seen on PRITE x 2 - if the exams actually have any value at all other than as a hoop to be jumped through. I'm confused that of the 150 PRITE questions on day 1, there was one question that I can think of that even tangentially discussed the management of depression (seemingly the bread and butter of psychiatry, though one might make the argument that depression is more appropriately managed in the primary care setting and, thus, not worthy of focus on a psychiatric in-service exam) and one related to the use of benzodiazepines despite how commonly they are prescribed for seemingly anything, the ongoing "epidemic" of inappropriate prescribing, and their fairly limited range of actual indications. I'm not experienced or wise enough to definitively say that X content is not worth learning or testing while Y content is. But I think it's fair to question the validity of an exam that actually tests very little of what I have spent the overwhelming majority of the last 15 months - and will spend the next 9 months - doing clinically. Something doesn't match up here: either the exam is bad or my program and my clinical work aren't teaching me what I'm "supposed" to be learning.
