The Boards

Abstract

Preparation for eventual board certification begins the day you start your training, regardless of specialty. All boards are composed of three parts: a written examination, an oral examination, and some kind of case log. The written exam is fairly straightforward. Throughout your training and after, you will systematically study all of the disciplines, and take a multiple choice test. If you pass, you will be permitted to take the oral exam, which will not only test your knowledge, but will actually test your personal skills by demonstrating to the examiner(s) that you are the kind of person who will be safe enough to be considered board certified.

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that helearnsthoroughl. —Thomas H. Huxley (1825–1895)