Custom Resident Evaluation

ABC offers an independent evaluation of your residents. An outside opinion and appraisal is helpful to validate your internal review and impressions. This empowers both you and the resident to take corrective action prior to completing their residency.

We are malleable and willing to work with you to best fulfill your evaluation needs. Because the CREOG provides a standardized evaluation of your resident's written exam skills, the most popular evaluation format requested is an oral exam forum. This format is most instructive for a number of reasons.

The only CREOG-driven evaluation is the in-service training exam. Often times a resident is pegged with his scores as to his national and program ranking. Both you and your faculty's interactions with the residents may subliminally be influenced by this bias. However since the next step is the oral exam, there is often surprise and dismay when a resident who historically did well on his CREOGs fails his oral exam. Conversely, a resident who performs average may actually be brighter and more capable, than his scores suggest. This exercise can predict and forewarn.

Dr. Das and host faculty examiner
evaluating a resident's limited case list

The oral exam format consists of defending a case list and structured cases like the ABOG oral exam. The resident collects a limited case list--typically five each in OB, GYN, and Office. A strict deadline is given.

Typical of human nature, there are those residents who submit their case list on time and have vested a great deal of thought and energy in their collections. Conversely, there are those who waited until the last minute and haphazardly drafted, and the majority in between. The residents get a rude awakening as to the process and all agree a great lesson learned and the hope to be much more attentive and timely when they begin their year long collections for the real thing.

The residents also have the luxury to actively compare and contrast their case lists with their fellow residents. Unfortunately when they matriculate into practices beyond residency, they are often the only one in their community collecting cases and no longer have ready access to others undergoing the same process.

"Dr. Das has worked with our residency program for the past two years, assisting us with a custom oral resident evaluation program. This program has been well received by both residents and faculty, and especially our graduates who have taken their ABOG oral exam. Our residents felt very well prepared for their case list preparation and oral examination because of the ABC program, as evidenced by a 100% pass rate. In addition, Dr. Das has worked individually with a number of our residents and we have seen significant improvement on CREOG in-training examination scores and confidence about taking the ABOG written exam."

Dr. David Forstein
Residency Program Director
University of South Carolina School of Medicine-Greenville

Finally this exercise is enormously helpful for those chief residents who plan on furthering their training in a subspecialty fellowship. Unfortunately many fellows were unaware that they needed 20 patients from their chief year until after they are in their fellowship. Imagine the logistical hassle, especially if they did not retain their residency log, and if their fellowship is far from where they did their residency? The chief residents who have been accepted to a fellowship are advised to complete their 20 patients for their case list for this exercise. This completes the task, especially while recall is at its highest, revisions are easy, and they already have an idea of the exam focus. They have a huge head start for their general boards.

"The lectures were far better than most of my combined years of residency. I think if I had attended ABC as a resident, the CREOGs (in-service training exam) and written boards would have been much easier" -- Sep 09

The oral format is also an excellent tool to unmask incongruence of knowledge base with articulation. Fascinating that some residents' superior articulation skills are far above what their CREOG scores would suggest. This is ideal to discover this when they are third year residents. This then allows for one-on-one evaluation, which usually reveals that their written exam performance is simply a processing and not a content problem. Thus this oral exercise will help your residents perform better on their written tests as well.

Host faculty examiner (and past board examiner)
conducting structured cases examination -
it doesn't get any closer to the real thing!

Oppositely, the oral exercise also unmasks those who flogger with an oral exam, yet do well on written tests. It is far better to identify this now, as they will be most unpleasantly surprised to discover this when they are now isolated away from the protective cloak of the residency.

ABC recommends using the host faculty as examiners as well. This is based on that old adage "If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime."

We give a "teach the teachers" session beforehand. However like anyone, the faculty learns best by doing. One session is typically enough to empower you and your faculty to implement the same evaluation process in the future.

Thus a custom resident evaluation exercise is a win-win-win for you, the resident, and your faculty. An independent, objective, and neutral evaluation by an outsider provides a bee-line to the issues that impair learning. Corrective action can then be undertaken.

Give us a call so we can understand better how to help you. Remember you can always come check us out for free at our review courses. We look forward to partnering with you to meet your resident's educational needs.

"One of our chief residents was so impressed with your course, that we're sending ALL of our 2nd to 4th year residents." -- JS 7/07

"Dr. Das, remember I was the 3rd year resident that you said performed 'stellar' during the oral forum when you came and evaluated our residency program? Everybody was surprised, as my CREOG scores were not congruent with my oral exam performance. I made a special trip to listen to your written exam tips seminar and am so glad I did. This year, not only did I obtain my highest score ever, but I was 12 points higher than the chief year average. The 'system' is brilliantly simple, easy to incorporate, and made all the difference for me. I will definitely use it for the written boards." -- SW Feb 09

"The other chief resident and I are recommending this course to our junior residents for preparation for the written osteopathic boards. The only issue is that we have a limited budget for our medical education conferences. Regardless of this, we both felt that it was WELL worth every penny. There are cheaper, more local courses, but our senior residents felt that they were a waste of time. I intend to come back before my oral boards in two years." -- RC, 2008