Took the written board exam in late June.
I didn't write down my experience on it because I was in the middle of getting out of my old job, starting 2 new jobs, and buying a house.
I pretty much agree with every Anasazi wrote.
I used the Beat the Boards notes & the Kaufmann notes. Clarification--that's the Kaufmann notes he gives out with his review course and not the textbook.
The Kaufmann text is a great book, but as Anasazi mentioned, its overkill for the boards. Its good for reference or those who really want to just read on the subject for the sake of reading it.
The Beat the Boards notes are designed to teach you the material in addition to having you pass the exam. I guess if you took an SAT or MCAT course its kinda like the equivalent of Kaplan, where Kaplan gives you a lot of high yield information, and you'll have to spend a lot of time studying. It also is very complete, and will most likely build up your foundation of knowledge making you a better psychiatrist.
Overall very good notes though I thought the substance abuse section was too long and low yield (too many entertainment pictures, side jokes that aren't relevant etc). I thought the neuro section was a bit hard to follow, but aside from that very good.
They'll also take time to read, digest & memorize becuase its a few hundred pages of notes, several of which are jam packed with data. It'll take about 2 months to get these notes down (assuming you study intensely about 5 hrs/day or more)
The Kaufmann notes are somewhat of an equivalent of Princeton Review for the SAT or MCAT. It gives the highest yield data, gives quick & easy ways to remember it, but doesn't focus on teaching the subject as if you didn't know it already. The neuro section in Kaufmann was superb & much better than Beat the Boards and several things they mentioned would most likely be on the exam was on my exam.
However it will most likely not build up your knowledge as its seemingly designed to be a high yield, quick & dirty study guide.
Its also much less material, allowing you to less material, and you could probably memorize the notes in about 2 weeks.
If I had to pick between the 2-I'd pick Kaufmann, but I really did like having both. There were certainly things about one set of notes that I liked better vs the other.
If you want a set of notes where you're going to put in a lot of time, and want to study slow & steady, I'd pick beat the boards.
I only had maybe 1-2 brain scans in the exam, and they were shockingly easy. I didn't have to study all those brain scans to get them right.
The cytochome liver enzyme system, I only had very high yield questions on them. Some people have recommended to memorize all of it which is overkill because you'll be spending a week doing so and there was only about 2-3 questions on it, all of which weren't hard. In practice, I simply consult a chart. I think memorizing it is silly, though I do see too many psychiatrists not ever referencing the chart. I already knew the high yield stuff about it. If you consult the liver enzyme chart in daily practice (which you should anyway with any patient on multiple meds), you're probably almost there with what you'll need for the exam. I'd recommend only gutt-memorizing the high yield stuff for it as the Kaufmann and BTB notes suggest.
I had the classic OTL (the benzos not metabolized by the liver) question on my exam about 8x! Yep. 8x having a question asking for the same thing, though differently worded.
Definitely memorize the pediatric neurology stuff. I remember a few Williams Syndrome questions, and I was able to ace them because I had a Williams syndrome patient on my long term unit.
I was able to answer 2/3ds to 3/4 of the questions with no difficulty at all. In fact it was to the point where on several of the questions, I wanted to answer the question without even reading all of it, but I forced myself to do so because I figured there was proabably some type of trick associated with it. Of the remaining 1/3 to 1/4, about 1/2 I was able to narrow down to 2 answers, and the rest I was scratching my head with a WTF feeling.
The exam is much easier (at least IMHO) than Step 3 because its psychiatry/neurology focused, and this is our field. Of course this is with full indication that I didn't get my score back, and for all I know I failed it. On every USMLE exam, I felt I knew 1/3 of them, 1/3 I had to narrow down to 2 possibilities, and 1/3 was a WTF moment.
Sounds like I don't have to worry too much about Statistics then.....
The stats questions as Anasazi mentioned on my exam were also few, and they were easy ones. Type I vs Type II error for example is easy. The stats questions on USMLE were definitely harder (e.g. making you get equations, plug in the numbers, then have to get that answer and plug it into a different equation). The stats on this exam was on the order of you either know it, or you did know it in the past when studying for USMLE, you just forgot it.
