The "new" Psychiatry Board Exam in Sept

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Hey guys, looks like some of us are asking about the new board exam again coming up in Sept. I am doing Beat the Boards from last year, and I have ordered the "update" for this year, but I think it doesn't come out until later this month, possible around July 26 according to their site.

I really hope they have updated some material including practice stuff and how to handle the Video part. I am very scared about the video part of the exam. Anybody else have any other resources to study or comments on Beat the Boards notes? I don' t know if the videos are that useful -the notes are good though.

I will also use the Kenney and Speigel question book, which I heard is still very good for even the new boards.
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I've seen notes from different years and there was hardly any difference. A buddy of mine took the forensic psychiatry board review course at AAPL (I know, not the same thing) 10 years ago, and took the course again 2 years ago and they were 95% the same.

A friend of mine had the Kaufman notes from 6 year ago, and a set from 1 year ago and they weren't that different.
 
Beat the Boards has very good notes, at least the ones I saw from 2011 were good.

i would probably say the more important thing to ask about our new exam coming up is, what are the style of questions we are going to get? Is it going to be those 1-liners from PRITE? Or updated more USMLE-style vignettes from Step 2/3? Or something in-between?

the biggest update that BTB can do, is update their video question bank to something more similar to the exam last year (from first-hand reports).

Kenney and speigel book still remains a great source, this coming from people who took the exam last year.
 
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Kenney and Speigel IMHO is the best source of questions. The style of question is similar to the boards.
In fact I'd say they're so similar that when I took the actual exam, I knew the answer with the first sentence but made myself read through the entire question just in case.

BTB notes are comprehensive but they are not to the point.
Kaufman notes are to the point but don't really teach the material if you want to learn for the sake of learning, and are more for the sake of passing.

Further, at least when I took the boards about 3 years ago, the BTB notes, while good overall was somewhat weak in the substance abuse area. Just my opinion.
 
whopper said:
Kenney and Speigel IMHO is the best source of questions. The style of question is similar to the boards.
In fact I'd say they're so similar that when I took the actual exam, I knew the answer with the first sentence but made myself read through the entire question just in case.
.
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The only problem now is the questions relating to the videos. There are not many resources to practicing these questions. People are running out of time because they keep replaying the video to find their answer.

The only resource I know to practice the new board video questions is BTB. I don't know if Kaufman course has any. If you do enough practice, you will learn your own strategies to doing better, like glancing at the questions before you hit Play. Although I heard this video section is mainly a problem for people who did not grow up with English as their primary language.
 
does anybody know what percentage of the exam is the video or audio vignettes?
 
The vignettes were the afternoon section when I took it last year. It was also a joke (see other threads). Grainy videos, ambiguous answer choices. I wouldn't be surprised if they threw out half or more of them. I also wouldn't be surprised if it happened again.
 
Are you referring to the oral board videos? I don't know if the videos of the new format are the same as the one on the oral boards.

Actually if they were, I didn't mind that part of the exam at all because at least in that section, the examinees were all given the same material, the same questions, and the pass/fail was based on more objective criteria.

But at least for me, I wouldn't want to comment on the videos for this new board exam format unless they're the same because if they're not, I don't know how they're handling it.
 
Does anyone have any thoughts on studying for the neuro part of the new boards? I did a search and the Kaufman board notes seem good for passing (not actually learning neuro probably), but I don't have anymore money to pay for that.

I already blew over $1000 on BTB, and did the neuro in that. People who took the new boards say the BTB neuro questions are not like the boards.

How about doing the 400 questions in the back of the Kaufman text? They look like good quality questions?
 
If you could purchase only one, which would people buy to prepare for psych boards: Beat the Boards, or Osler?
 
Beat the Boards
 
I don't know how up to date Osler is going to be. not saying the info changes that much with board studying, but just for piece of mind.

i'm beginning to watch the BTB 2012 lectures that were just put online. Some of the lecturers are doing a decent job of telling us some more things about the exam.

Haven't gone through the question bank yet.
 
Do you guys recommend reading text material from kaufman neurology book or just review Q and A along with explanations ?
 
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1. Read Kaufman neuro textbook, but more importantly do the questions, and u will
very easily pass the neuro section of the boards.
2. Last year, the questions for the morning part were pretty much straight forward, 1-2
lines for most.
3. Do the speigel Q&A book but more importantly read the explanations in the answer
column for all the options.
4. I read BTB notes, say it helped some
5. As previously noted, the new video format was horible to say the list in terms of
audio and picture. My advice is " take notes as the video is playing ", so u don't
have to play it all over again to be able to answer a question.

Goodluck!!!
 
bounds said:
1. Read Kaufman neuro textbook, but more importantly do the questions, and u will
very easily pass the neuro section of the boards.
2. Last year, the questions for the morning part were pretty much straight forward, 1-2
lines for most.
3. Do the speigel Q&A book but more importantly read the explanations in the answer
column for all the options.
4. I read BTB notes, say it helped some
5. As previously noted, the new video format was horible to say the list in terms of
audio and picture. My advice is " take notes as the video is playing ", so u don't
have to play it all over again to be able to answer a question.

Goodluck!!!
Click to expand...


Thanks for these helpful tips! This helps a lot.

It seems like (just like you said)
1. The BTB notes are pretty good, if you can go over them several times
2. Kaufman Nuero questions in the back seem to be very good quality
3. The Kenney and Speigel book questions are much better source than any PRITE questions can be.
 
If you had limited funds and could only purchase 1 of these HOME review courses, which would it be: Beat the Boards or Kaufman Notes? Why?
 
DrWho41963 said:
If you had limited funds and could only purchase 1 of these HOME review courses, which would it be: Beat the Boards or Kaufman Notes? Why?
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I can't speak for Kaufman since I haven't tried both classes.

But BTB has good lectures online, seems to be good faculty, with tips about what questions the boards likes, good online questions (although the BTB neuro ones don't seem "fair"), 3 or 4 video exam tests which is good, and thorough notes. Don't know if Kaufman has the same?
 
Encephalopathy, what happened to your post about Kenney and Speigel? I meant to reply but didnt have time.

That Kenney book seems to have a lot of errors yes, and the questions seem way too easy for the real boards. But the answer explanations are definitely the best focused you can find.
 
Hello all...I am also taking boards in Sept and wanted to see if there were more thoughts out there about study options. I've been using Beat the Boards but then started to get worried about putting all my eggs in one basket so I got the BoardVitals question set the other day. However, I don't know if others have used it, but it doesn't seem that great.

So in any event, people who did just use BTB did you feel it was sufficient? Any other recs, particularly given it's coming up? I have looked at the Kenny & Spiegle questions as well but pretty much just those two resources.

Does anyone know the pass rate for the boards now that, thankfully, the oral part is gone?

Thank you in advance for any and all thoughts...
 
TaxiDriver said:
Encephalopathy, what happened to your post about Kenney and Speigel? I meant to reply but didnt have time.

That Kenney book seems to have a lot of errors yes, and the questions seem way too easy for the real boards. But the answer explanations are definitely the best focused you can find.
Click to expand...

Sorry! After I did some more questions, I thought my post was overly harsh so I pulled it. I had thought they repeated a question verbatim back-to-back, but I got tricked and they were actually slightly different.

The errors do make me lose some confidence in the overall quality though. The explanation for Test 1, Q87 says that "valproate is the classic inhibitor of cytochrome P-450 3A4 which causes inhibition of enzymatic clearance of lamotrigine". I've never heard that before.

I'm guessing the questions are way more straightforward than the actual test questions, but overall I do think it's a pretty good review.
 
Encephalopathy said:
Sorry! After I did some more questions, I thought my post was overly harsh so I pulled it. I had thought they repeated a question verbatim back-to-back, but I got tricked and they were actually slightly different.

The errors do make me lose some confidence in the overall quality though. The explanation for Test 1, Q87 says that "valproate is the classic inhibitor of cytochrome P-450 3A4 which causes inhibition of enzymatic clearance of lamotrigine". I've never heard that before.

I'm guessing the questions are way more straightforward than the actual test questions, but overall I do think it's a pretty good review.
Click to expand...


Thank you for posting this. I was using that book and agree that there definitely are some errors, anecdotal responses, and ambiguous questions and this question was a good example. There also is a lot of good information too, as described above.

I thought this interaction above was like a P450 UGT1A4 interation or something weird like that, but even a lot of internet sources and my PDR program have conflicting information.

I had attended a board review course earlier this year where they recommended this book and a lot of the information they gave us there was straight forward. I cannot remember the organization teaching the class (Kaufman was there), but they suggested that the test is not going to try to trick us up. It should be straight forward, but you do need to have a knowledge base. One of my friends who took the test last year said the same thing.

The people running this course also mentioned that this year they were changing the order such that the videos were first (I think?) . The theory was that people were losing focus? The pass rate was very high too--like in the 90s (again, i think). I don't remember much more or even how credible this is.

I feel like I am shooting in the dark with the study materials to use, but from looking here it is good to see what others are using.
 
anyone know if it is possible to just buy the questions from BTB's??
 
How is everybody spending this last week before the exam? Doing questions? Reading BTB notes?

Can you believe the ABPN is still making changes to the exam this late? I just got an email that questions numbers for the video part will be lowered and stand-alone questions will increase. Not a big change, but you shouldn't be doing this stuff less than a week before the exam.
 
TaxiDriver said:
How is everybody spending this last week before the exam? Doing questions? Reading BTB notes?

Can you believe the ABPN is still making changes to the exam this late? I just got an email that questions numbers for the video part will be lowered and stand-alone questions will increase. Not a big change, but you shouldn't be doing this stuff less than a week before the exam.
Click to expand...


I read that and was like, "WTF?" Its not like i would prepare any differently, but the exam is less the a week away!

Im skimming through the Mass General Book (I think its an older edition). Its outdated, but makes me think and realize what i need to look up. Think I also need to do something more for neuro. Happy I have mon, tues, and wed off next week to cram a little more. Works been too crazy for me to actually get much studying in.
 
SuperSoccer19 said:
I read that and was like, "WTF?" Its not like i would prepare any differently, but the exam is less the a week away!

Im skimming through the Mass General Book (I think its an older edition). Its outdated, but makes me think and realize what i need to look up. Think I also need to do something more for neuro. Happy I have mon, tues, and wed off next week to cram a little more. Works been too crazy for me to actually get much studying in.
Click to expand...


Same here, got Mon-Wed off and might need to get out of the apartment to the medical library in the morning and just cram.

I'm on to reviewing BTB notes over and over again. As for neuro, I'm scared about it also. But talking to 2 seniors at my program said the neuro part was "very fair" last year and they got over 80% on that section by doing BTB stuff and questions from Kaufman (didn't read the text though).
 
studying neuro is like applying sandpaper to my eyeballs

sorry about the visual... nowhere else to vent, really... 🙂
 
I'm not sure on the pass rate last year, but heard it was "high." That's what my program director said.

Good luck to everyone tomorrow and Friday! Let's hope none of use waste our $3000.
 
DONE!!! Im pretty sure im the first person to take it. At this point, all study tips would probably be futile, but I felt the stand alone questions were very fair--all material that I came across in residency and/or by studying and most of it was pretty basic. I was expecting it to be way more specific and broader. There was stuff I did not know, but it was more due to my just not knowing it.

The vignettes and videos I often had a "WTF" response to and thought there were either multiple right answers (even more than what you were to check), or that there was information missing or something...or that there was a lot of subjectivity to one's interpretation of the case.

Just curious what other people think too. Good luck to everyone else!
 
How come you're already done ? Exam dates are 13 and 14 , right ?
 
Piaget said:
How come you're already done ? Exam dates are 13 and 14 , right ?
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Im active duty military living in Japan. The closest testing site was Guam. Its currently 8:35pm here on Sept 13.

Not a troll...i swear. Feels kinda weird to be done when all my friends/fellow residents haven't started. Don't freak out thinking you missed the test--i spent the last two days doing that, thinking I might have crossed the international date line without knowing it.
 
Oh I see 🙂
Thank you for your message !
 
SuperSoccer19 said:
DONE!!! Im pretty sure im the first person to take it. At this point, all study tips would probably be futile, but I felt the stand alone questions were very fair--all material that I came across in residency and/or by studying and most of it was pretty basic. I was expecting it to be way more specific and broader. There was stuff I did not know, but it was more due to my just not knowing it.

The vignettes and videos I often had a "WTF" response to and thought there were either multiple right answers (even more than what you were to check), or that there was information missing or something...or that there was a lot of subjectivity to one's interpretation of the case.

Just curious what other people think too. Good luck to everyone else!
Click to expand...

phew, i have someone to commiserate with. i felt exactly the same way. the regular mcq's were totally reasonable and i felt extremely well prepared for them having used spiegel, the focus book, and reviewing old PRITEs. many of the vignettes were just absurd i thought. oftentimes, in the questions requiring multiple answers, i felt i could identify one obviously correct answer, but then none of the others would seem right. i also thought many of the questions asking about mental status were very subjective and i'd often to watch the video vignettes a couple times to see if i was missing something about the mental status given the answer choices. anyway, glad to know there's at least one other person out there who had the same reaction as me. good luck to everyone.
 
Done too! And definitely felt the same way and relieved to read the other responses. The video portion was very frustrating and it was really messing with me during the exam. It was difficult picking out the 2/3 'right' answers when most either seemed right or not right at all. The stand alone's for the most part were fine. Of course some where I was kicking myself for not knowing or remembering but also a fair amount that were so easy I couldn't believe they were actually on the test. If it were just the stand alone's I don't think I'd be worried at all. Adding in the clinical part however changes the concern level!
 
jamesearlejones said:
phew, i have someone to commiserate with. i felt exactly the same way. the regular mcq's were totally reasonable and i felt extremely well prepared for them having used spiegel, the focus book, and reviewing old PRITEs. many of the vignettes were just absurd i thought. oftentimes, in the questions requiring multiple answers, i felt i could identify one obviously correct answer, but then none of the others would seem right. i also thought many of the questions asking about mental status were very subjective and i'd often to watch the video vignettes a couple times to see if i was missing something about the mental status given the answer choices. anyway, glad to know there's at least one other person out there who had the same reaction as me. good luck to everyone.
Click to expand...


Thanks for posting--agree with everything. One examiner's "mildly constricted" could be another examiner's appropriately "labile," and there were definitely times where I felt the same way as you on the multiple answer questions. I wonder if there really were more right answers availible then what you were allowed to check--I mean, a differential diagnosis can basically include anything depending how you interpret the case.

I studied moderately hard for this--did the Spiegel book as well as reading through the mass general book (yes, read it from cover to cover) and then using an additional "psychiatry in review" book for last minute review. I felt that material-wise I was very prepared--if not over prepared, but was struggling to make clinical assessments from the vignettes.

Guess we'll find out in 10-12 weeks?
 
I would like to move the subject to the best post-boards exam beer.

I am currently drinking a Southern Tier Pumking, and I think it's worth a nomination.

I drink to make the vignettes go away.
 
billypilgrim37 said:
I would like to move the subject to the best post-boards exam beer.

I am currently drinking a Southern Tier Pumking, and I think it's worth a nomination.

I drink to make the vignettes go away.
Click to expand...

I stuck with Mic Ultra last night--was hoping to find something specific to Guam, but no luck. There wasn't a lot of selection, but I found it an awesome coincidence that there was a place to buy booze next to the testing center.

Im already in my morning hangover phase, but congrats on finishing! I imagine most US test takers are now at the bars or getting evaluated by psych in the ER setting.
 
Yep, agree with you all - standalone questions were fair and vignettes very subjective. Constricted-blunted-flat is a continuum!
 
ditto ! mcq's were easy but CV were subjective. Felt initial presentation had inadequate info and did make few wrong diagnosis but perhaps did ok in the following question after they revealed diagnosis !!
 
I am unable to understand the scoring system of this exam !
 
Last edited:
Piaget said:
I am unable to understand the scoring system of this exam !
Click to expand...

Did they have it posted how they do this? I thought we were given a percentage and if you got above a certain percentage you pass...but that certain questions were also thrown out or something.

Do we know how much each section was worth?

im just nervous having to wait for 10-12 weeks.
 
Same here , I am freaking out too ! They mentioned passing scores are not predefined so I wonder how they will define this score. May be folks who took this exam last year should shed some light on this ????
 
Really!! some questions get thrown out ? I have no clue about that..
 
Piaget said:
Really!! some questions get thrown out ? I have no clue about that..
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Almost anything I could post about the exam is hearsay and its hard to say what is and what is not a rebutable source. Two of my friends who took it last year I *think* said their scores were in a percentage. I thought on all these standardized tests there are "experimental" questions that are not scored or if statistically a high percentage of people missed a question that these can be thrown out too, but i might be making this up.
 
Well, one question had a pretty damning typo as part of the correct answer (like, they had the acronym really botched up), so I'm pretty sure that one would have to be thrown out.
 
Any idea what percentage of correct answers required to pass ? I know I should get over this exam but its getting better lol
 
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