Dr Jack Krasuski Archives - Beat the Boards!

ABPN® Exam: What’s in Scope and Out of Scope on the Psychiatry Board Exams?

August 30, 2024 by Jack Krasuski MD Leave a Comment Categories: All Posts Tags: ABPN board exam, ABPN exam, abpn exam guidelines, board exam prep, Dr Jack Krasuski, psychiatry board exam, psychiatry board exam prep, psychiatry board tips, Psychiatry boards

As part of our ongoing quality assurance, I’ve been reviewing and addressing comments left by learners regarding specific multiple-choice questions that make up our ABPN® exam psychiatry 2300+ question QBank. (Our QBank allows each learner to comment on any and all QBank questions.) One of the most common comments I’m encountering is one that questions whether the topic of the QBank question is in the scope of the exam, meaning whether it is a learning point that is tested on… Click to Read More

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

October 30, 2023 by Jack Krasuski MD 6 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

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… Click to Read More

Does the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology Exam Test on Landmark Studies?

September 12, 2019 by Jack Krasuski MD 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

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… Click to Read More

Diagnostically Focused Questions on Psychiatry Boards

June 20, 2019 by Jack Krasuski MD 1 Comment Categories: All Posts, Crack the Exam Question Code Tags: beat the boards, board exam tips, diagnostically focused questions, Dr Jack Krasuski, jack krasuski, psychiatry board exam prep, psychiatry board exam question, psychiatry board exam questions, psychiatry board prep, psychiatry board tips

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… Click to Read More

Fear of Board Exam Failure

November 2, 2018 by Jack Krasuski MD 5 Comments Categories: All Posts, Coping Strategies After Failing a Board Exam Tags: beat the boards, board blog, Dr Jack Krasuski, exam failure, fear of exam failure, how to overcome the fear of exam failure, jack krasuski

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… Click to Read More

Levels of Board Exam Questions

October 5, 2018 by Jack Krasuski MD 6 Comments Categories: All Posts, Crack the Exam Question Code Tags: board exam, board exam questions, board test prep psychiatry, Dr Jack Krasuski, jack krasuski, levels of board exam questions, psychiatry board exam, psychiatry board exam prep, psychiatry board test prep, sample psychiatry board questions

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… Click to Read More

Screen Functions on ABPN Board Exams

September 21, 2018 by Jack Krasuski MD Leave a Comment Categories: All Posts, Strategies to Deploy During the Board Exam Tags: abpn, Dr Jack Krasuski, jack krasuski, video vignettes abpn board exams, video vignettes board exam

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… Click to Read More

Differentiating Diagnoses on Psychiatry Board Exams

September 17, 2018 by Jack Krasuski MD 2 Comments Categories: All Posts, Crack the Exam Question Code Tags: board exam tips, diagnoses on board exam, Dr Jack Krasuski, eating disorders, illness anxiety disorder, jack krasuski, somatic symptom disorders

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… Click to Read More

Board Exam Prep: How to Avoid Study Procrastination

September 7, 2018 by Jack Krasuski MD 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 in board exam prep 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… Click to Read More

Transforming Board Exam Question Data into Exam Performance

September 4, 2018 by Jack Krasuski MD 2 Comments Categories: All Posts, Crack the Exam Question Code Tags: beat the boards, board exam questions, data, Dr Jack Krasuski

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 a board 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… Click to Read More

Sleep and Board Exams

August 29, 2018 by Jack Krasuski MD 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 why sleep and board exams is so important. 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… Click to Read More

Why Are the Psychiatry Vignette Board Exam Questions So Difficult?

August 14, 2018 by Jack Krasuski MD Leave a Comment Categories: All Posts, Crack the Exam Question Code Tags: Dr Jack Krasuski, psychiatry board exam, psychiatry board prep, psychiatry board tips, psychiatry board vignette, psychiatry exam extended vignette questions

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 to handle… Click to Read More