UofF Board Review course review?

[SPF100]

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to see if any current grads and recent grads experience with UofF Derm/Dermpath board review course. Obviously with everything going online these days there is the added benefit of recorded lectures to review. Before committing $600+ dollars just wanted to ask if any fellow Derm residents would say yay/nay towards it supplementing learning.

Also, while on this topic there have been several new recourses since AAD updated its recommended materials on the website but does anyone have any feedback on BoardVitals, Oakstone etc? these are quite pricey but I would bite if you guys felt it helped.

Thanks!

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[smartparts]

I think the UF board review course is pretty good overall with a few caveats. It seems to follow the Jain review book and Sima Jain is one of the speakers. It's very expensive and I'm not sure how relevant it will be to the new format of Applied exam. The online lectures include over 24 hours of content which you can speed up to 1.2x. I would say unless someone else is paying for it, it's not absolutely essential. BoardsVitals is OK, but I think the AAD Board Prep Plus is better, and both are better than Derm-In-Review which pretty much just tests nit-picky facts and repeats a lot of questions. I have no experience with Oakstone.

The UF course does have a really good dermpath slide review of ~200 cases with multiple choice questions. There are a few courses that have popped up over the past few months including SkinPath Solutions, DermPath 101, AAD VMX, and Board Review Boot Camp (from Ben Kaffenberger at OHU) which offer 100-200 cases that are very similar to the UF dermpath offering. They range in price from totally free to $350. The general format for all of them is MCQ+digital slide followed by a long discussion video that explains the right/wrong answers for each block.

 

[username456789]

Wow there are a lot of boards resources that weren’t around when I was taking them!

 

[Tornado52]

I have not taken the U of F course, nor sat for the board exam yet either so take my opinion with a big grain of salt. I'd just save your $600. You got into a derm residency so you must be pretty smart, provided you studied some during your residency you should do fine. If the board exam is graded properly (big "if" there I know) no one ever really fails this exam. You're smart, you study, you do well.

 

[dermie1985]

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to see if any current grads and recent grads experience with UofF Derm/Dermpath board review course. Obviously with everything going online these days there is the added benefit of recorded lectures to review. Before committing $600+ dollars just wanted to ask if any fellow Derm residents would say yay/nay towards it supplementing learning.

Also, while on this topic there have been several new recourses since AAD updated its recommended materials on the website but does anyone have any feedback on BoardVitals, Oakstone etc? these are quite pricey but I would bite if you guys felt it helped.

Thanks!

I took the UofF course when I was a resident - it was quite popular - I'd imaging something like 30-40% of dermatology residents in the US were there. It was many beneficial because (1) it was physically located in Tampa at the testing center facility, so let you familiarize with that (2) the dermpath slides were helpful, especially the format in order to simulate the exam. Some of the lectures were phenomenal, others were definitely not.

Overall, I liked the course mainly for points #1 and #2. Point #1 is now irrelevant as the board exam is no longer in Tampa. For #2, I think you can find similar quality dermpath reviews elsewhere. I wouldn't enroll for the non-dermpath lectures, because they were honestly very hit or miss, and sometimes less helpful than my own internal program lectures. If you really need a "kick in the butt" to start studying / identifying weak points, I'm sure the UofF course is still great for that. It's comprehensive and covers Peds Derm, Derm Surg, Med Derm, and Dermpath. You probably could get similar benefit elsewhere too, at a cheaper price.