Thursday, July 9, 2015

Preparing for the ABEM Emergency Medicine Board Exams

Background:

Emergency medicine (EM) residency graduates need to pass both the written qualifying exam and oral certification exam as the final benchmark to achieve ABEM board certification through The American Board of Emergency Medicine ( ABEM ).  Following the successful completion of an accredited emergency medicine residency, candidates for board certification take the written qualifying exam in the fall after graduation as the first step to becoming an ABEM diplomate.  If successful in this first step, candidates will take the oral certification exam in the spring or fall of the following year. 

Many residents and recent graduates spend a significant amount of time and money preparing for the board exams using emergency medicine board review.  As a result, EMRA would like to help you to make informed decisions about how best to spend your time and money preparing for the boards. As EMRA neither produces nor promotes any specific board review product, the EMRA Board of Directors has sponsored a survey of recent graduates to assess their overall preparation for the boards and their opinions and comments about specific board review products that they may have used during their preparations.  Every effort was made to include a comprehensive list of all textbooks, review courses, tutoring, and online products available. 

The objectives of the survey are to:

1) Determine the amount of residency and individual preparation, 

2) Determine the extent of the use of various board review products, and 

3) Elicit evaluations of the various board review products used for the ABEM qualifying and certification exams.

Methods:

EM residency graduates from the past three years who were members of EMRA upon their graduation from residency were surveyed via email. There are approximately 900 residents graduating from residency each year with 95% of these graduates being EMRA members.  Residents were sent an introductory email explaining the survey and three follow-up emails with links to the online survey.  A total of 520 graduates completed the survey corresponding to a response rate of approximately 19%. 

Respondents were asked about the presence of formalized educational activities within residency training for the written and oral board exams, frequency of formalized training sessions, average numbers of hours per week spent studying for the boards.  They were asked to comment upon the numbers and types of board review products used.  For each product, respondents were asked to rate the quality of content; quality of the figures and photos; level of detail; relevance of practice questions; ease of use; value for time and money; and overall impression.

Reference: https://www.emra.org/resources/preparing-for-the-boards/

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