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Register for Free Course: How Not to Fail Your Psychiatry Board Exam

by Leave a Comment Categories: All Posts, Coping Strategies After Failing a Board Exam, How to Prepare For Your Board Exam, Strategies to Deploy During the Board Exam

I have some very good news for you. Recently, I completed a 4+ hour course called the How Not to Fail your Psychiatry Board Exam that tells you how to succeed on your psychiatry boards, whether you took an exam and failed or are taking a new exam for the first time. We already have over 500 registrants who are taking advantage of this free How Not to Fail course. Who is this course open to? Everyone. If you have… READ MORE

Why Attend the Live 2020 Beat The Boards! Psychiatry Board Review Course?

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I’m happy to tell you we are holding our annual Live Beat The Boards! Psychiatry Board Review Course on July 22-26, 2020 in Rosemont, IL. The course hotel is about one mile from O’Hare Airport, with free shuttles to and from the airport. This course is designed as preparation for the 2020 Psychiatry Certification and MOC exams. Attending a live course has the downsides of 1) costing more for the course and associated travel expenses and 2) taking you away… READ MORE

Advice When Waiting for Your Medical Board Exam Results

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We’ve had tens of thousands of physicians take our board prep courses and this is what I learned about the weeks waiting for exam results: there is a weak relationship between how you think you did on the exam and whether you passed. Hundreds of times, exam-takers have emailed me feeling terrible about how “horribly” they did, only to find out that they passed. It’s normal to leave an exam feeling uncertain or discouraged. This occurs because: Often the biggest… READ MORE

Does the APBN Test on Landmark Studies?

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We’ve received a question on whether the APBN tests on landmark studies in their field. We reached out to ABPN for clarification, but they did not confirm nor deny a focus on landmark studies.  Thus, I fall back on my own and our clients’ extensive experience in taking ABPN exams. In short, I’ve neither heard nor experienced ABPN directly testing on landmark studies. For example, there will not be questions such as, “Which of the following results was found in… READ MORE

VIDEO: Why the Knowledge / Exam Performance Gap? (Part 1 of 5)

by 2 Comments Categories: All Posts, How to Prepare For Your Board Exam

 Below is a transcription of the video (it has been edited for clarity): Many physicians who do poorly on their boards feel frustrated by underperforming on their exam in relation to their medical knowledge and confused by not knowing how to fix this performance gap.  Here I explore the first of five contributors to medical board exam underperformance and provide solutions. Poor Focus on Exam Question Due to Anxiety One cause of poor board exam performance is a lack… READ MORE

VIDEO: Diagnostically Focused Questions on Psychiatry Board Exams

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 Below is a transcript of the video – it has been edited for clarity. Today I am going to discuss diagnostically focused questions in board exams. You want to recognize the core diagnostic features. There can be a challenge with these diagnostically focused questions as the DSM-5 has a lot of disorders and each disorder has quite a few criteria. These challenges can make it hard to learn all of the criteria for all these disorders, especially for the… READ MORE

VIDEO: What To Do If You Fail Your Board Exam

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I’m here to talk about a difficult topic with you today.  What do you do if you fail your board exam? I know that this is likely a difficult time for you, but I do not want you to be so hard on yourself. Take some time to come to terms with this and then create an action plan for how you are going to do better next time. There is a silver lining when it comes to failing your board exam because we are more than passing or failing an exam.

VIDEO: How to Study More Effectively

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Today, I focus on how to study more effectively based on the Landscape of Knowledge. I categorize new information we learn into three tiers of understanding: data, information, and knowledge. A exam candidate can fool themselves into believing they understand the material through familiarity with it even when they haven’t converted it into knowledge through active learning. Here are specific examples that illustrate these points.

VIDEO: 5 Tips to Minimize Procrastinating on Your Board Exam Studies

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 Welcome.  It’s Dr. Jack and I have 5 tips for you on how to minimize procrastination when it comes to studying for your board exam. Tip 1: De-Emotionalize the Job You Have to Do My first tip is based on a thought experiment.  I’d like you to take a minute to imagine that you have a clone of yourself, and your clone is identical to you.  They have the same bright smile and winning personality that you do.  There… READ MORE

Fear of Board Exam Failure

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Fear can make us behave in counterproductive ways, including how we respond to an upcoming medical board exam, such as a neurology or psychiatry board exam. We have set ways of responding to fear – fight, flight or freeze. Classically, fear is defined as an emotion triggered by imminent danger, as we would experience if we saw an aggressive person running toward us or if we heard breaking glass in our house as we were lying in bed. Anxiety is… READ MORE

Levels of Board Exam Questions

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One way I’ve found categorizing board exam questions helpful is to view them in a hierarchy of three levels, each one building on the previous one and requiring greater use of one’s clinical judgment. My three levels are: Know It →  Recognize It →  Decide It. Now let me explain and I promise this will be practically helpful and, I believe, comforting even. Know It This lowest level of question relies almost exclusively on recalling some specific piece of information… READ MORE

Screen Functions on ABPN® Board Exams

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Today I respond to two questions regarding the what information is available on the exam screen on ABPN® board exams. Lab Values on ABPN® board Exams I received a question from a psychiatry board exam candidate this week about whether normal lab values are available as a drop down list accessible from the exam screen. We received a response from ABPN® as follows: “We do not provide a drop down list of normal lab values, but when the committee feels… READ MORE

Differentiating Diagnoses on Psychiatry Board Exams

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Here’s an important board exam fact: you can study, study, and still further study the DSM-5 and still incorrectly answer diagnostically-focused psychiatry board exam questions. How can this be? If you have ever felt that your exam performance is not as good as your knowledge base suggests it should be, the following insight will partly explain this discrepancy. The discrepancy between knowledge and performance arises from a discrepancy between what you spend your time studying (and memorizing) and what the… READ MORE

Board Exam Study Procrastination

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I received a request from a colleague preparing for their psychiatry board exam. Today I tackle this fairly common problem by explaining procrastination, its formation and treatment. Procrastination is a type of avoidance, and avoidance is a common strategy used by many to cope with unpleasant life situations and also is part of several psychiatric conditions. Any disorder with “phobia” in its name is a type of avoidance. The problem with avoidance is that often it is counter-productive and makes… READ MORE

What To Study If You’re Repeating an ABPN Exam

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If you’re studying for an ABPN board exam that you previously took and did not pass, the question you confront is how you should prepare this time around. Here’s the first important thing to do: Review your last board exam’s “Performance Profile,” that is, the list of exam scoring categories. Review your scores on the big categories (listed below). Any category which you failed or which you passed but not by much, should become your study priority. The thinking goes… READ MORE

ABPN States Medication Doses and Schedules Are Not Tested

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Good news! This last week, our course editorial manager, Michael Cho, contacted the ABPN to clarify their current board exam guidelines, specifically whether medication doses and schedules are tested. The ABPN’s response is that “medication doses and schedules” are not tested. This does not necessarily mean that exam vignettes never include medication doses or schedules, but that doses and schedules are not the focus of the question being asked.   All of your Psychiatry Board Exam test prep needs can… READ MORE

Transforming Board Exam Question Data into Exam Performance

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Have you ever had the experience of performing worse on a multiple choice exam than you knew your knowledge base allowed? If so, this post is for you. To explain where the disconnect between how much you know and how you scored on an exam may occur, I explain the relationship between four concepts: data, information, knowledge, and exam performance. I provide examples, and then invite you to consider where your “disconnect” in this chain of data processing occurs. Let’s… READ MORE

Sleep and Board Exams

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I’m about to tell you something so obvious you may want to throw something at me. Despite the apparent obviousness, many exam candidates still will make the mistake I’m about to describe and do so for entirely understandable reasons. Let me explain. On the day (or several days) prior to your exam, your anxiety level likely will increase. You may realize you are not as prepared as you would like to be and regret not devoting more time to preparing.… READ MORE

VIDEO: Why are Psychiatry Exam Extended Vignette Questions So Difficult?

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Extended vignette questions now comprise half of the Psychiatry Certification Exam and one quarter of the Psychiatry MOC Exam. This vignette type of multiple choice question is easy in that the topics are not designed to trick you or to cover obscure points. And at the same time they are very hard because they require you to make render a judgment among options that are shades of gray. Listen to Dr. Jack present a detailed and uplifting presentation on how… READ MORE

Pacing Yourself on Your Psychiatry Board Exam

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I’ve received several emails from doctors who’ve recently taken their psychiatry board exam. Here are some quotes that I present to you anonymously and then provide my responses. “I recently took the Psychiatry Board exam and I honestly don’t know what to think.  I was struggling with time.  The vignettes were super long….one of the video was about five minutes long.  I did take about four breaks but honestly didn’t have time to eat lunch.  I finished about five minutes… READ MORE

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