How to Prepare For Your Board Exam

How to Pace Yourself on ABPN Exams with Linked Vignettes

September 9, 2022 by Jack Krasuski 1 Comment Categories: All Posts, How to Prepare For Your Board Exam, Strategies to Deploy During the Board Exam Tags: exam performance challenges, medical board preparation, perfectionism

Question: “Dr. Jack, how do you recommend pacing ourselves during the vignette sections of the 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 which one completes… READ MORE

A Perfectionism That Will Kill Your Exam Performance

August 12, 2022 by Jack Krasuski Leave a Comment Categories: All Posts, How to Prepare For Your Board Exam, Strategies to Deploy During the Board Exam Tags: exam performance challenges, medical board preparation, perfectionism

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 turns 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 Not to Lose Your Mind When Preparing for Your Boards

March 24, 2021 by Jack Krasuski Leave a Comment Categories: All Posts, How to Prepare For Your Board Exam Tags: avoiding study overwhelm, effective board exam study, minimizing pre-exam worry, stress-control, worry ruminations, worry vs. study

If you engage in the behaviors below, you are in danger of losing your mind in the process of preparing for your board exam. You spend more time worrying about the exam than studying for it You keep buying more and more 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 stress under control and instead expend… READ MORE

How to Prepare for Your Board Exam When Time is Short

February 8, 2021 by Jack Krasuski Leave a Comment Categories: All Posts, How to Prepare For Your Board Exam

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. There are two ways to think about your available study time. Depending on… READ MORE

Does the APBN Test on Landmark Studies?

September 12, 2019 by Jack Krasuski Leave a Comment Categories: All Posts, How to Prepare For Your Board Exam Tags: abpn exam guidelines, abpn landmark studies, apbn, apbn testing landmark studies, beat the boards, Dr Jack Krasuski, jack krasuski, landmark studies

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?

July 26, 2019 by Jack Krasuski 3 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: How to Study More Effectively

March 25, 2019 by Jack Krasuski 1 Comment Categories: All Posts, How to Prepare For Your Board Exam Tags: beat the boards, board exam study tips, board exam tips, board test prep, how to study, jack krasuski, psychiatry board exam prep, psychiatry board tips, studying for board exams, studying for my boards

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

March 4, 2019 by Robert Sheeler, MD Leave a Comment Categories: All Posts, How to Prepare For Your Board Exam Tags: board exam prep, board exam prep tips, board exam stress, stress, stress reducing exam tips, test taking stress

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

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

January 22, 2019 by Jack Krasuski 2 Comments Categories: All Posts, How to Prepare For Your Board Exam Tags: american physician institute, beat the boards, board exam study tips, how to study for my boards, jack krasuski, procrastination, stop procrastinating

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

Board Exam Study Procrastination

September 7, 2018 by Jack Krasuski 2 Comments Categories: All Posts, How to Prepare For Your Board Exam Tags: board exam test prep, Dr Jack Krasuski, how to not procrastinate, study procrastination

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

September 4, 2018 by Jack Krasuski 4 Comments Categories: All Posts, How to Prepare For Your Board Exam Tags: beat the boards, board exam tips, Dr Jack Krasuski, how to prepare for the abpn exam, jack krasuski, psychiatry board exam, psychiatry board exam prep, psychiatry board prep, taking the abpn for the second time, what to do if i am taking the abpn for the second time, what to study if i am taking the abpn exam again

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

Sleep and Board Exams

August 29, 2018 by Jack Krasuski Leave a Comment Categories: All Posts, How to Prepare For Your Board Exam Tags: beat the boards, Dr Jack Krasuski, enough sleep to ace exam, enough sleep to pass exam, how much sleep should i get for my board exam, jack krasuski, right amount of sleep, sleep and board exams

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