I just returned from our Kansas City Psychiatry Oral Board Course. I saw some truly awesome performances. One doctor I mock-examined, however, made a slight but hugely costly error. He stopped his interview 10 seconds early!
It cost him the exam!
Why? Let me explain.
When you conduct a 30 minute oral board exam (either with an adult or an adolescent), the examiners assume that that length of time is insufficient to obtain all the information pertinent to developing a sensible differential diagnostic list and individually-tailored treatment plan. Examiners assume that if you were given 10, 20, or 30 additional minutes you would continue the interview and delve into further pertinent detail.
If you stop the psychiatric interview early, no matter how little time is left, you communicate a crucially negative fact about yourself. You are telling the examiners that you are spent, that you have nothing else left to assess. You are done!
But in fact you are not done. You only think you are. You lose all credibility instantly because the examiners see that you do not see the 30 minute interview as an opportunity to conduct a competent but nevertheless screening interview. For you the 30 minutes is more than enough!
So to erase all doubt from your mind, let me put it plainly. Never, ever stop the interview on your oral boards until you are told to do so by your examiner. Do not stop even if your watch / timer tells you that time is up. The examiners are the official time-keepers.
What do you do if your mind goes blank and you really FEEL LIKE STOPPING? Go back to the chief complaint. Treat it like home base. If you are ever lost or don’t know what else to ask, ask something else – anything – about the details of the patient’s chief complaint. Now, go forth and conquer.
And if your Psychiatry or your Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Oral Boards are coming up, please look up the course pertinent to your exam and read up on it. You won’t go wrong joining me and our faculty at our Beat The Boards! Courses. You have my word on that.
Life Tip
When you fly out from your home town airport and have parked your car then do this. Take your cell phone and take a picture of the sign that tells you which floor, row and aisle you parked at. That way you don’t need to remember a hard-to-recall set of letters and numbers.
I did this when flying from Midway Airport here in Chicago to the KC course. On the way back I simply checked the pic on my phone. (BTW, the iphone has a special “GPS-stamp” app for this if you want to get fancy about it. )
