Board Review Resources 2024

[MUSIC] Welcome back everyone, this is Sam. >> This is Karine and we are two Octux. This week's episode we're discussing our favorite He-Malk Board of View resources. We get asked this all the time. We originally released this episode almost two years ago, so we're excited to redo it. This is pertinent to new fellows who are starting to think about how to study during fellowship, preparation for your in-service or ITEs, and of course setting for the boards, which for those that are taking them are coming up in just a few weeks. >> Absolutely. I feel like when one class is taking the boards, the next class is already thinking, "How are we going to do that next year?" I think this is pretty timely and it's following up our Board Review, which we posted about a month ago. To start things off, let's go over the individual board setting plans that you and I had the months leading up to boards. >> During fellowship, I was pretty consistent. In the first year, you're immersed in this whole new specialty, and it's hard to really have a consistent studying pattern. But I would try when I was on specific blocks, like let's say I was on breast clinic, I would try to watch the Board Review videos for breast cancer on MD Anderson, do the questions on one of the Cubanks, which we'll talk about throughout that block. I would try to take my in-services somewhat seriously. I would say in my first year, I certainly didn't study for all the sections, but I made a point that I was going to focus on just due on college, for example, to see if I could figure out how to study and do well in that area, so that I could replicate it for the other areas. When I have fellows now that's often what I suggest to them when they're taking their first in-services, figure out what works for you. You don't need to just minimally study all of the areas. It's too much, but focus on a few areas. I always open NCCN for every patient. Even as an attending, I often still am opening NCCN. Repetition is one of the keys in oncology. One of my mentors in fellowship always said that the category ones on NCCN is what is fair game. All of the other stuff is not. He would control F category one through all of NCCN to familiarize himself with what was going to be highly testable. In terms of my study plan, the actual year of the Board, so as I was completing third year fellowship, I planned to take human onc boards, which were for us in early November. I made a study plan that started in July. So I gave myself around four months of dedicated Board of View studying and we can go into more specifics. Definitely. So some of the study things that I did through fellowship, I focused on patient-driven reviewing. Since I remember things best when I can correlate back to a case of saying, oh, Mrs. Jones had this, I remember diving into literature. I remember figuring out a plan for her based on this study and these things. It really helped me retain the information. So that's what I did from day one of fellowship. I would also like you prepare for rotations. That was in breast clinic. I would read the end of the NCCN guidelines. They have discussion slides at the very back. And they're terrific as a broad overview of breast cancer. Not just the medical oncology side, but the rad out side, the diagnosis, the path. Everything is kind of in their written in just a few slides. So I found those extremely helpful. I would spend my month before the ITE watching the high-easealed MD Anderson videos. And to me, I picked out GI breast and lung. And so that's really where I focused the bulk of my studying. Because I thought these were the three key things I thought I could excel in. And then I did a ton of practice questions. I have to remember things that I get wrong more than the ones that I get right. And so doing repetition of questions really helps me retain and lock down that information. I didn't get too serious about my board setting until July, just like you. So July is really when I started my schedule. And I know we've posted these and we can post them again on social media this week. But that is when I had a very regimented schedule. And I am at my studying. I spent weekends because I was starting in my own practice as an attending. So I would use weekends to do my board review. And I would actually pull in one of my co-fellows starting in September and October. And we do kind of review sessions together. Yeah, I absolutely agree. And one of the most asked questions we've had is about our self-made sheet sheets. So we have examples of these posted on our Instagram page as well as on our Twitter with our week by week study plans of how we both laid out our study schedule. Definitely. And so I think people are interested in this because when you hear about a big topic like "Testicular Cancer" or "Hodgekinson Phoma" thinking about it broken down to the high-sealed facts on a page, it sounds great. I know you and I made them. And so I think the most important thing though for you guys out there is not just focusing on what we that was high yield, but for you it's what's high yield. Because I will tell you my GI sheets was one of my stronger topics. They're pretty much empty because I kind of knew it. Versus some of my colleagues who are focused on breasts, their brush sheets probably were empty and mine were jam-packed. And so really handwriting them and focusing on what's important to you and what your gaps of knowledge are is the most important I think topic and tip of making those cheat sheets. And so let's dive into more study materials that you and I use. And we can start off old school so books, Korean love books did you use? So I did not use that many books when I was studying. You know the oncology pocket book that little turquoise book is one of the ones that I actually used throughout fellowship. It was out of date even when I was using it. So I don't believe there's a new version. It's still out of date. But what I would do is it was really easy to carry around. So if I was kind of in a lecture by faculty or fellow and they said something like, oh this is very testable, I would like have that page open in that little book and I would highlight it. Or if I was doing questions, I would kind of have that page open because it's so succinct that it would kind of give me a framework of how to think about different things. And when I made my cheat sheets, I ended up basing them off of that little pocket book in terms of what I had highlighted and written as well as having the NCCN simultaneously open. And I also use ASCOCEP. The thing with ASCOCEP is it's very wordy for those last few months. It wasn't like I was reading chapters of ASCOCEP but I think when I was immersing myself on a sub-specialty clinic, I would try to review the ASCOCEP materials. I agree. I use ASCOCEP as well but I used Morson my first two years of fellowship. Just to get a good basis, not really when it came down to board studying. I did buy a book. It's called "Hematology and Transfusion Medicine Board Review Made Simple." It was awesome for hematology. It was simplified down to the four. I am not keen-minded. You guys know this. I've said it multiple times but it was everything I needed to ace the hematology boards written in a very simplified manner. It's on Amazon. I found it extremely helpful. I also got the oncology board review blueprint study guides. They have them for hematology as well as oncology. They are great quick outlines they're made by the Michigan group. They do update them so they are pretty up-to-date routinely and they are terrific. And so one last thing again, not necessarily a book but I just alluded to it. That last portion, the NCCN guidelines, the discussion portion. I used that a lot just to get a good basis of the overview of the topic I was trying to review on. Then I'd go back into the NCCN guidelines when I was thinking about case-by-case. I found that very helpful. Up next, Karine, what videos did you use when you were studying? Absolutely. I just wanted to add, you know, for the books, I wasn't really aware of some of the ones that you used but now that I've looked at them as we prepare episodes, I definitely think some other ones could have been very helpful. In terms of videos, I would say one of the strongest resources that I found were the Ash Review series. I watched them in my second year and then I did them in real time in the third year, kind of the months leading up to the board so they would release a weekly episode as well as kind of a Q&A after and I thought that that really kept me on schedule for my key in studying. I also watched the GW videos because there's the ones that we had access to earlier in fellowship and then at the end I had access to the MD Anderson videos. Again, we're not represented by any of these resources but I thought that the MD Anderson ones were a little bit more helpful for myself personally. Agreed. So the Ash Review series, again, you guys know I've said a million times, I think it's one of the sole reasons I passed my key in boards. I like you. I watched them in real time, the weekly episodes. I did the review questions on Fridays in real time. I found it very helpful. It kept me on track. I actually printed some of the PowerPoints because I thought they were so useful. I would actually go through them not just with the lecture but without and then when it came down to other videos MD Anderson videos. Again, we're not indoors. We're not sponsored but I found them the most useful. I watched them from a year one of fellowship all the way through my board setting and sometimes when I need to re refresh myself when we're doing an episode together, I'll reference back to them the Anderson Williams or the Ash Review series or any of these review utilization topics that we talk about. Next, let's go through question banks. I know you did a lot more question banks than I did. Yes, I tried all the question banks. So I would say hemockquestions.com was probably overall the most useful. Hid had strong questions. Again, everything is not perfect. I don't know that we have a gold standard of a Q bank the same way that we did an internal medicine with your world and mix up but that was probably the best one. And then I also did hematology on QBank.com, they're really quick stems. There were some wrong answers at the time that I did them. I didn't think it was that great, but I've always been somebody that's like the more questions the better. So I did them, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend that one. And then hemalkreview.com, I thought that they were really good questions, but there were some that didn't feel super relevant to what was tested on our boards. So things like percentages or radiology questions, but some of them were very good. And then as we talked about the Ash Review series had questions and then Ask Ostep has questions. So I did all of those as well. Yep. So I was pretty much a perist. I did hemalkreview.com. I can't compare to anything else, but I had heard that it was all encompassing. So it's what I used. And I actually, in my first year of fellowship, I bought three years. It was relatively inexpensive. I could use my CME through my program. So I went ahead and bought three years of it to get me through fellowship as well as my board studying. And I will say it was a terrific investment. I did also after and, you know, taking my boards. I have dabbled in the Ash as well as the Ask Ostep. They're really good questions. I will say the Ash ones are, I think, a little bit more difficult than the actual test. You only have so many cases before it'll lock you out and it won't tell you the right answer. At least the last time I had done them. Right. And I think one other thing with hemalkquestions.com is that you can do random blocks, which is obviously is how the real format of the exam is the month leading up to the actual exam. I would do some random blocks just to get used to having, you know, all tumor sites in a 40 question block. And so one other area that we wanted to cover because obviously this is a passion of ours, but let's cover board of you podcast. Absolutely. So this is something that when you and I created our podcast, we couldn't say anything because this is why we made the podcast that you guys are listening to. We finished our boards and we thought, gosh, if we would have had a podcast, it would have been so beneficial to supplement with our studying. So of course, it'll be a PR to us. So two on docs, we were built for board review. We're built for you guys. We also have great colleagues. So we love the fellow on call. They have terrific board review from, you know, day one of fellowship all the way through board reviewing and into beyond the oncology brothers, you know, they are community oncologists. They do up to date. Real time changes in all of the oncology fields and other algorithms are par none. They post them on Twitter. They're really great as handouts. I do reference them to our fellows in clinic pretty often. And then also the ask of guidelines. The SO guidelines is creating more and more podcasts going through isolated topics like how to treat advanced rectal cancer, how to treat localized breast cancer. And so I think those are pretty beneficial podcasts you guys can use to supplement. And we can be posting photos of all these resources on our Instagram and our Twitter this week so that you guys can kind of see what we're talking about in this episode. And so Kreen, what other tips do you have for board review and studying? I mean, I think consistency as an all, you know, of the stages of medicine is key questions because that makes you critically think and also learn from the wrong answers. And like we talked about, you know, making a board review plan kind of a few months before studying. And, you know, plan for life because a lot of us, you know, when we're studying for boards are not only moving, starting our first attending job, there's a lot of moving pieces. Make sure that you take time for yourself also, you know, enjoy a little bit of a break, you know, life happens and it's important to have a good work life balance at this stage and at all stages actually. I agree. And I think that's why it's important to give yourself so many months to study for boards because there's no such thing as cramming and you physically cannot cram for these tests. It's just not possible. So you need to enjoy your life and then also have your studying plans as you go. I think one other big thing is definitely use the test, break down and blueprint to your advantage. Don't waste time studying on something that's less than 1% of an exam. Instead, focus on things of the highest yield tumor types. The most asked questions, especially if you're pressed for review time. And remember in the real world, we always can look things up. You can always ask your colleagues for professional opinions. You can always get second opinions, but on test days is all about flat memorization. So you guys really just need to commit these things to memory. But in the real world, we all talked to each other about difficult cases. I think the last thing that you guys should think about is prepping yourself and prepping early about what are you going to look at the days before the test, or even the morning of the test, because this is going to be that quick refresher, the things you need to memorize. For me, it was electroferesis and going over von Williams right before that gene metology boards for you and maybe something different, but prep those before hand so you have them. You're ready and you feel confident going into any of your tests, whether it's the IT or the boards. Absolutely. And you can refer to what kind of our high yield, you know cheat sheet things that we talked about in an episode a few weeks ago. And so good luck to everybody studying for your boards. As always, thank you for listening. Please reach out to us with corrections, comments or newer studying resources that you've enjoyed on our Instagram or Twitter to onc.ducks.