Aim of In Training Exam

The In Training Examination is a national and yearly exam administered by the American Board of Emergency Medicine to all emergency medicine residents in the USA. It helps to evaluate a resident’s progress in obtaining the fundamental knowledge to practice independent emergency medicine. This study helps to point out  the effects of a 40 hour board review lecture course on the resident in-training examination in emergency medicine.

A 40 hour board review lecture course was designed and implemented during the weekly 5 hour long resident conferences during the 8 weeks preceding the in-training examination date in 2006. Attendance was mandatory at the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) standard of 70% or greater. A positive result was considered to be a 10% increase or greater in the resident’s individual national class percentile ranking among their national peers for their class year for the emergency medicine in-training examination.

According to the ABEM website ,persons having higher In Training Exam scores possess higher chance of passing the initial qualifying examination to be certified emergency medicine physicians than residents with lower exam scores.

Read More:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2657258/

Inservice Exam & Intraining

Inservice Exam helps to identify areas of deficiency in a resident's surgical education, ,to track a resident's progress from year to year and ,  to enable the program director, director of medical education, and the Residency Evaluation and Standards Committee to evaluate the strengths and deficiencies of each training program.

Intraining Exam helps residents to become well equipped with basics of emergency surgeries. The American Board of Emergency Medicine ( ABEM ) in-training examination is a yearly national cognitive test administered to emergency medicine residents in USA to evaluate progress toward obtaining the fundamental knowledge to be independent emergency physicians.

A 40 hour board review lecture course was designed and implemented during the weekly 5 hour long resident conferences during the 8 weeks preceding the in-training examination date in 2006. The review course was based on the topics outlined in the “model of clinical practice of emergency medicine”. The course consisted of lecture reviews of test taking skills, trauma, pediatric emergencies, toxicological emergencies, cardiac emergencies, pulmonary emergencies, gastroenterology emergencies, neurology-psychiatry emergencies, endocrine emergencies, hematology-oncology emergencies, otorhinolaryngology-ophthalmology emergencies, genitourinary emergencies, obstetric-gynecology emergencies, orthopedic emergencies, dermatology-environmental emergencies, and emergency medicine potpourri given by the emergency medicine faculty at a university medical center. To accommodate the inclusion of the 40 hour review lecture series, the 4 hour monthly journal club was suspended for 10 months. Furthermore, attendance was mandatory at these lectures at the standard Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) guideline of 70% or greater. A positive result was chosen to be a 10% increase or greater in the resident’s individual national class percentile ranking among their national peers for their class year for the emergency medicine in-training examination. A resident was excluded from the study if there was no 2005 in-training examination score for self-comparison. The 95% confidence intervals (CI) were used to analyze the results. Of 16 residents, 1 (6.25%; 95% CI: 0–18%) showed a positive result of increasing their national class percentile ranking by 10% or greater. For the PGY2, one of the eight had a positive result (12.5%; 95% CI: 0–35.4%). For PGY3, no resident (0%; 95% CI: 0–35.4%) had a positive result.

Read More: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2657258/