Oral Boards 2022

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Are scores for September likely coming out tomorrow?

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Scores are up! Passed! I had a vacation between completing ICU fellowship and attending job 5 weeks. I used UBP for content review a couple weeks writing down a blurb about most the key words at the end of each case stem. Then i had old stems from Jensen that i looks over which was nice for about a week. Then I took a couple weeks going over 3 available retired oral board stem banks available on the internet, writing/speaking them in my head or out loud. So in total UBP 40+ stems + grab bags, plus 40+ retired stems on the internet. I had a couple mock exams with board examiners in residency but that was mostly it. Good luck to the future peeps taking this! It's a tough test but do-able! Please message me for anything!

The first stem was long form and actually got 20 minutes for review. Second short stem was 10 minutes. I felt the long stem and grab bags went overall well as it could, maybe a couple fumble of words but nothing major. By the second stem though, i was already feeling toast (probably not enough sleep from night before). My brain just wanted to be done, definitely fumbled through half of the stem, nothing killing but needed a lot of leading from the examiners, grab bags were not so good in my opinion. I said I don't know a handful of times in the exam on follow up questions. Very pleasantly surprised that all my examiners were very accommodating and nice and actually helpful, not aggressive at all. OSCE went ok i thought, maybe fumbled a couple portions of the exam.
 
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I took Dr. Ho's course, it was a good way to get realistic practice exams and plenty of videos to watch on your
 
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After thinking I had failed, I found out I passed. My prep consisted mainly of UBP question stems from some bootlegged pdfs that have been passed on from class to class over the years. I went through all of them once for review and then went through about half of them actually answering the question either out loud or in my head and then comparing my answer to the one in the answer book. I knew the UBP responses were mostly overkill, so I took that into consideration when tailoring my responses to my practices and also during the real test.

The program where I trained at had oral board practice in a group of residents usually every week and twice a year we would get tested by two attending to emulate the actual test. Aside from that, I didn’t do any other practice. This was mostly driven from a place of insecurity and in retrospect I should have done at least a couple of more mock practice questions with attendings when I had the chance. I ended up studying for about 6 months total. First couple of months was mainly one or two questions from a stem and as the months progressed I stepped it up to doing a stem or two per day to doing a short and long stem per day.

During the test, I felt rushed the entire time and felt like I said some pretty dumb things. Sometimes, the examiners took pity on me and redirected me and other times I stuck to my guns despite it not following an algorithm.

I’m not super knowledgeable and I never did well on the ITEs but I’d like to think I have good communication skills and I think that plus the self practice helped me get through.

Good luck to all those still waiting!
 
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Impatiently waiting. Fingers crossed tomorrow is the day.
 
I passed the applied exam!

I used Anesthesiology Consultants (Michael Ho course) guaranteed 4 day crash course plan and prepared like a full time job. I worked 2 days per week in September and took all of October off from work until after the exam. While reviewing the course videos I took thorough notes in a notebook and organized them under specialty topics. I used Dr. Ho's tips during mock exams and on the actual test. I studied and verbalized all of my notes the week before the exam. I did not review anything the day before or the day of the exam.
 
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I passed the applied exam!

I used Anesthesiology Consultants (Michael Ho course) guaranteed 4 day crash course plan and prepared like a full time job. I worked 2 days per week in September and took all of October off from work until after the exam. While reviewing the course videos I took thorough notes in a notebook and organized them under specialty topics. I used Dr. Ho's tips during mock exams and on the actual test. I studied and verbalized all of my notes the week before the exam. I did not review anything the day before or the day of the exam.
Congrats. Happy you could do this, but the opportunity cost of taking 1.5 months off from work is like 50k for an anesthesiologist. At that point just take the test, if you fail retake it next year.
 
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Passed. Part of me is glad it's over. Another part is mad I even started this entire process.

Ho and his course are beyond lame. I did an exam with dude and it's clear he was trying his best to intimidate me into believing I needed his product to pass. I did do some practice exams with some of the anesthesia consultants faculty that I found to be very helpful. The exam I took with him was not helpful at all.

Have fun friends and pass it the first time.
 
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