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Are exams taken during residency?


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Hello.. starting med school soon and i know i will take exams regularly during this time. What i wanted to know was if when i start residency if i will be taken exams too? Will they be the same as i take in class for grades or is it more of a learning type thing? Thank you

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Less often, generally. In psychiatry  here we do the LMCC part 2 (national licensing exam) roughly after PGY1 (the first part is at the end of medical school), we take a formative (ie doesn't count) national content multiple choice exam every year, we have departmental written exams after PGY1 and 2 (that also don't really count for much unless you spectacularly fail) and we have oral exams/observed clinical assessments multiple times per year (but if you fail you just do it again until you pass). 

It feels a lot less arduous than medical school because the actual marks don't matter in the same way and it's all relevant to what you need to know and are interested in so it feels less purposeless. At least that's been my experience.  Much less pressure and less preparation. 

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I think what's different for me is that nobody cares anymore if I get a 90% or an 85%, as long as I'm improving and working on my knowledge base.

Out of curiosity, where does the feeling of pressure come from for you?

I feel pressure to learn things and get good at my specialty, but the exam itself doesn't really create much sense of pressure for me, because I'm doing that anyway.

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Just my experience:

USMLE Step 2 CS, and 3 (done Step 1 and 2 CK already)

LMCC Part 2

In-house written exam (3 per year)

2 in house oral exams per year

Resident In Service Exam (RISE) - annually in March, MCQ online

For board certification exams:

Canada

American Board

Potential Royal College of UK, depending on my mood and budget lol

 

Bottom line, get used to writing lots of exams.

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Surgical Foundations  is an exam you prefer to pass the first time, and therefore, you do feel the pressure and are motivated. However, I love my residency and am excited by the new challenges I face on a regular basis. 

Then, there were the other exams from time to time which you had to prepare for and the monthly presentations where you had to do your research and be prepared for questions where you had to be on top of your game. 

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4 hours ago, shikimate said:

Just my experience:

USMLE Step 2 CS, and 3 (done Step 1 and 2 CK already)

LMCC Part 2

In-house written exam (3 per year)

2 in house oral exams per year

Resident In Service Exam (RISE) - annually in March, MCQ online

For board certification exams:

Canada

American Board

Potential Royal College of UK, depending on my mood and budget lol

 

Bottom line, get used to writing lots of exams.

 

Side note: Are Canadian specialists eligible to write the UK board exams?

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On August 30, 2017 at 11:52 AM, Doc93 said:

Hello.. starting med school soon and i know i will take exams regularly during this time. What i wanted to know was if when i start residency if i will be taken exams too? Will they be the same as i take in class for grades or is it more of a learning type thing? Thank you

In my program we had:

LMCC 2

Surgical Foundations

2 practice Orals per year (formative)

2 practice writtens per year (formative)

US based in service exam yearly (formative)

Royal College Exam. This is the hardest and most stressful exam you will ever write. I spent 2 years prepping for it, with the last year being pretty much constant studying (and my experience was typical for my program)

You also get evaluated on your performance after each rotation by the staff you worked with. 

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Similar to other above in Radiology I have had the LMCC2, a yearly ACR exam in radiology, an oral exam once or twice a year, an OSCE style exam once a year, many of us do write the ABR exam in the fall of our fifth year, and of course the final royal college exam - which everyone will tell you no matter what specialty you are in is simply the hardest exam you will take in your life, and will take a ton of time to prepare. Like NLengr I have been preparing for my exam for most of my fourth year, and now are going full steam max studying for the next 9-10 months in preparation. 

"these are end times, and dark days. Yet we still dream of the light" - ha

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The exams are a different beast in residency. 

The Royal College exam waits at the end.  I just call it, "the exam". People say this is the hardest exam of your life. They are not exaggerating. 

With the exception of the LMCC exam - which is more of a "getting out of med school tax", all the exams written in residency are geared to the final exam.

In residency the pressure is on you to perform to a standard that is preparing you to pass that final high stakes exam. 

Then in your last year of residency you live and breathe the exam. The exam prep for that last exam pretty much runs your life for 12 months except for some minor exceptions. You study harder than you knew you could study. ;)

 

For those studying of the Royal College, hang in there, it does end. :) 

 

 

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4 hours ago, rogerroger said:

This tells you something about the state of medical education and the exam. :)

I wrote it recently, and I can say the main issue is that it tests mostly super obscure nonsense.  Almost none of the material/questions will have any relation to day to day practice, and I think I actually became a worse doctor during my final year, because not only did I learn nothing of value despite studying 80 hours/week, but I stopped thinking about clinical problems and started thinking about mastering test taking.  

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On 9/10/2017 at 5:38 PM, goleafsgochris said:

I wrote it recently, and I can say the main issue is that it tests mostly super obscure nonsense.  Almost none of the material/questions will have any relation to day to day practice, and I think I actually became a worse doctor during my final year, because not only did I learn nothing of value despite studying 80 hours/week, but I stopped thinking about clinical problems and started thinking about mastering test taking.  

Aye.

The RC reforms coming down soon "might" change this. No more single high-stakes exam etc, EMBE etc.. Time will tell.

But if already conquered I guess we can always say we belong to the "old RC exam club". ;) 

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