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
Neurology Topics on the ABPN Psychiatry Board Exam
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There are two questions I get asked related to neurology disorders on the ABPN psychiatry board exam:
Are the neurocognitive disorders included in the neurological disorders category?
What should I study when studying the neurological disorders on my psychiatry exam?
Neurocognitive Vs. Neurological Disorders On ABPN Psychiatry Exam
First clarification: the neurocognitive disorders topic on… Click to Read More
What to Study if You’re Repeating an ABPN Board Exam
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
Diagnostically Focused Questions on Psychiatry Boards
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
How to Study for Board Exams More Effectively
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.
Levels of Board Exam 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
Pacing Yourself on Your Psychiatry Board Exam
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… Click to Read More
Recognizing Zebras in Clinical Vignettes
The medical boards pride themselves on presenting multiple-choice questions that are clinically-relevant and fair. In other words, the boards are not trying to trick you. This means that most clinical vignettes will describe patients with a common form of a disease or disorder. After all, these are the cases most of us physicians spend our days assessing and treating. However, as clinicians we do need to recognize the rare condition. So the question is, how do you distinguish whether the… Click to Read More








