Study Time for OKAPS?

[bucknut101]

For fellow residents and former residents:
Does you program give you time off the week before OKAPS to study? I've heard some programs give residents the Friday off before the exam or even the entire week.

Also does your program provide or send you to a review course for OKAPS?

My program, for example, give us no time off the week before. In fact, I was actually on call the night before the exam last year and up till 4AM. And other than a couple of review sessions by our glaucoma and plastics faculty we have no designed prep for OKAPS.

I'm interested to hear your responses because our faculty seems to make a big deal out of our OKAP scores. And since it is graded on a percentile I would like to point out to them that we do fairly well considering what we are competing against.

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[7ontheline]

What we got from our residency program was the guarantee that no resident would be on call the night directly before OKAPs. They paid a fellow to take call that night until after the OKAPs were done the next day. We did have a number of review sessions, and since my program was in Chicago (where there are 6 programs in close proximity) there were a few city-wide review sessions.

I definitely agree that it's unreasonable to be up until 4 AM right before taking the test, but IMO days off are unnecessary. You should be able to do well regardless. In fact, my class didn't let people take days off close to the exam because that screwed over the people who were then covering calls more frequently.

 

[Pastrami King]

Days off? Wouldn't that be nice. Sure doesn't happen at my program.

 

[Wolverine98]

Where I trained, it was similar to what 7ontheline. A fellow would cover call, usually starting around 9 the night before the test until after the test was over.
One of the other programs in the area hosted weekly evening review sessions started in late January. Faculty from our program would teach some of those sessions.

We had no special rules about vacation for that week.

Realistically, you're not going to get all that much out of one week of cramming. If you're not well prepared at that point, it's not going to save you.

Dave

 

[Mirror Form]

We get the Friday afternoon off before the OKAP's, and then an attending or fellow covers call until after the test. Although their version of taking call is to just tell every single non-emergent patient to walk into the ophthalmology clinic at 1pm on saturday.

 

[Andrew_Doan]

In the Navy, we gve our residents one week off, and the staff provides a review course too.

When I was at Iowa, I was on call the night before the OKAPs. Study-time was on my *free* time.

At UCLA, all the residents and fellows attend the UCLA review course. They get a couple days off in clinic but the review course extends into Sat and Sunday. I gave the pathology review component at UCLA this year.