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What to Study if You’re Repeating an ABPN Board Exam

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Repeating an ABPN board exam? 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… READ MORE

Should I Take a Combined ABPN Board Exam?

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  If you’re reading this, it probably means you’re double or triple boarded and you’re struggling to decide whether to take a combined ABPN board exam or, instead, take the two or three individual exams in the specialty areas in which you’re seeking to maintain your board certification. I cannot decide for you, but I can lay out the pros and cons so you can make a more informed decision. Important Information About ABPN Combined Continuous Certification Exams Note, first,… READ MORE

Why Taking a Board Review Course at the Last Minute is a Good Idea

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I know I’m biased in favor of board review courses to help you prepare for board certification exams. After all, I started the Beat The Boards! courses and continue to present many lectures at several of them. Despite this, I think I can convince you of the wisdom of getting a board prep course, even if it’s last minute. Reason # 1: There Is No Downside to Getting a Board Review Course At least when it comes to the Beat… READ MORE

Bridging the Gap: The Benefits of Telepsychiatry in Addressing the Psychiatrist Shortage

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The demand for psychiatric services in the United States has been steadily increasing over the years, especially during and since the COVID-19 pandemic. However, an alarming shortage of psychiatrists is only growing larger, creating a significant barrier to accessible, timely mental healthcare. There are many benefits of telepsychiatry that can help bridge this gap. Currently, over 150 million people in the U.S. live in areas that do not have enough mental health providers. Furthermore, over half of the counties nationwide… READ MORE

Should I Maintain My Board Certification for as Long as I Practice?

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My answer for myself is: Yes, I would always maintain my board certification for as long as I see patients. I would not practice with lapsed board certification. Here I present my reason – yes, I have only one reason to remain board certified. This medical-legal reason is relevant to and resonates with me. It may or may not be relevant or resonate with you, but I think it’s good for you to at least be aware of it as… READ MORE

How to Pace Yourself on ABPN Board Exams with Linked Vignettes

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Question: “Dr. Jack, how do you recommend pacing ourselves during the clinical vignette sections of the ABPN board exam? You mentioned aiming for 70 seconds a question but how would that work if there is a long vignette question stem or a 2-3-minute-long video?” This is a great question and I’ll answer it here (and then move on to address a larger question): Not every medical board exam question takes the same amount of time to answer. The pace at… READ MORE

A Perfectionism That Will Kill Your Exam Performance

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This week we completed our 5-Day Psychiatry Board Prep Course in Chicagoland. (It was great to see and speak with so many colleagues there.)  At the course, I received several questions from our attendees about what turned out to be a single problem described in different ways. The problem is a manifestation of one type of perfectionism. It arises as a feeling of a strong need to get complete and/or definitive information about a case described in an exam case… READ MORE

How to Get the Most from Group Study for Board Exams

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Preparing for your board exam can be done alone or with a partner or group. (From now on, I’ll write ‘group’ when referring to group or single partner.) Studying in a group for board exams has several pros and cons, which I cover in this article. Depending on the learner, either the pros or the cons of group study can predominate. Thus, group study is not for everyone. For those for whom group study is a net positive, it can… READ MORE

The World’s Biggest USMLE Step 2 ck QBank Now Available

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Our QBank team has been hard at work over the last several months developing, compiling, and vetting our new USMLE Step 2 ck QBank. It’s not just any old QBank though – it’s the world’s largest QBank for the USMLE Step 2ck exam. It includes 4,200+ multiple-choice questions written specifically for the USMLE Step 2CK exam. Because of the quality of these exam-reflective MCQs with explanations, we guarantee that users of The Pass Machine USMLE Step 2CK exam pass their… READ MORE

How Not to Lose Your Mind When Preparing for Your Boards

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If you engage in the behaviors below, you are in danger of losing your mind while in the process of preparing for your board exam.  You spend more time worrying about the board exam than studying for it You keep buying more and more board exam prep resources when you’ve barely made a dent in the materials you already have In this post my goal is to help you not lose your mind, that is, to keep your board exam… READ MORE

How to Prepare for Board Exams When Time Is Short

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Irrespective of how much time you have available to study for your board exam, you need to prioritize your activities. However, the shorter your available time, the more prioritization gains in importance. An additional challenge looms when time is short: even when maintaining discipline and attending to identified priorities, it is easy to let anxious feelings and ruminative worry thoughts distract you from maintaining that necessary discipline. Here’s how to prepare for board exams when time is short. There are… READ MORE

Advice While Waiting for Your Medical Board 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 American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology Exam Test on Landmark Studies?

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We’ve received a question on whether the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology exam (ABPN) includes testing 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 of nor experienced ABPN directly testing on landmark studies. For example, there will not be questions such… READ MORE

Why the Board Exam Performance Gap?

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 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 board 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 the medical board exam performance gap, or underperformance, and provide solutions. Poor Focus on Exam Question Due to Anxiety One cause of poor board… READ MORE

Diagnostically Focused Questions on Psychiatry Boards

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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 on the psychiatry boards. 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… READ MORE

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.

How to Study for Board Exams 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.

How Stress Can Ruin Your Board Scores

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Stress can you ruin your board scores. It sounds like a cliché but actually it is true! Stress leads to fight, flight, or freeze scenarios. When our autonomic nervous systems are out of balance, we can go into overdrive or we can freeze up completely depending upon whether the adrenergic nervous system or the parasympathetic nervous system is over-activated. Neither one of these is helpful for a good outcome in your test scores. Acute stress and chronic stress can both… READ MORE

Studying for the Boards: 5 Tips to Minimize Procrastinating

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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 the boards. 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 is… 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

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