Executive coach

WIN

Strategy, Part 1

Strategy and knowledge are the keys to passing the exam. Having only one makes passing difficult, although possible. Our aim is to have you excel in both aspects.

In developing strategy, our team talked to over a dozen American Board of Ophthalmology examiners, a few dozen past candidates, took all major oral exam review courses, reviewed most major oral exam textbooks and e-books. One ABO board member gave a sample answer to demonstrate how to answer a PMP. Some interviewees occasionally made remarks in an academic lecture along the lines of "this is important and was on my oral exam". A significant breakthrough was when two ABO examiners were inadvertently overheard talking in a public area during an Academy meeting about the exam's scoring methods and their opinions of it. They did not follow the war slogan "loose lips sinks ships". However, in compliance with the ABO non-disclosure agreements, no attempt is made to reproduce the actual exam during private coaching sessions. Besides, the ABO writes that questions are not reused, not even within the same exam weekend. There are reliable reports that up until the late 1990's, some questions were reused during the same exam weekend but, by the ABO's own admission, cases are no longer reused. Our tutoring cases, which exceed 1000 cases, were largely prepared before taking the ABO oral exam and verified that there was significant overlap with these cases and better than any other single oral board textbook.

The oral exams have been given ever since the ABO begin more than 100 years ago. In the past, candidates could eliminate examiners based on knowing them and reportedly eliminated those examiners which were rumored to be hard graders, even if their prior contact with the examiner was minimal, like a residency interview. The ABO no longer considers whether a candidate knows the examiner or is even in the same department, only if the examiner knows the candidate. Later, examiners had secret signals to the panel leader that a candidate was doing poorly so that the panel leader could listen and verify failure. One secret signal was a matchbook placed in an open position. The ABO no longer uses secret signals. This may be why the ABO says that the panel leader pops in occasionally solely to evaluate the examiner and not the candidate (without saying that in past decades, the panel leader actually did secretly evaluate the candidate).

The ABO says that there are no "whammies", cases that failure means failure of the entire exam. One test preparation lecturer wrongly (in our opinion) said, paraphrasing, that the written exam is to show that you're not stupid and the oral exam is to show that you're not dangerous. That statement is false, in our opinion. That lecturer further claimed that if you kill the patient in a case, you will fail. The ABO disagrees and states that each case is weighed equally and there are no "whammies".

The current Zoom arrangement also has the potential to create animosity between the candidate and examines. We have several strategies to avoid this.

The ABO grades on a compensatory method. More can be discussed during private tutoring sessions.

The Osler Institute and University of Colorado both conduct oral exam courses. Both are good. While we recommend buying extra computer equipment, such as a microphone, ring light or equivalent, and possible speakers, we don't think it's necessary to take both courses. Both give a suggested order of presentation. We disagree. Osler's suggestion is slightly different from Colorado. We have similar but better ideas. This is the heart of why we are confident that our tutoring can offer value to your exam preparation. We have also formulated sample cases that we believe are far more representative of the oral exam. One of our team members talked with someone knowledgeable about the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada oral examination, who explained differences in the oral exams (and made us think about what the ABO oral exam questions are all about).

During tutoring sessions, a list of all the courses, books, and study material available can be discussed.

VICTORY

Strategy, Part 2

Write to us for the meat of the exam preparation, which is tutoring. The fees are competitive with other exam preparation courses. It is money well spent and a validates that our efforts in tutoring is worth it when you pass.

Part 2 (tutoring) also has many other strategic ideas for oral exam preparation ranging from understanding possible tricks from the examiner, possible permissible tricks that candidates can use, better understanding of examiner training and how to use that to your advantage, using reverse engineering (like we did) of the PMP question development process to generate potential new exam questions. In addition to strategy, tutoring to practice and/or learn cases is part of Strategy, Part 2. (The ABO should not be angry at our reverse engineering as it is also called "studying hard" but not spinning your wheels.)

We believe that our tutoring is superior to any oral board preparation course. We also believe our greater than 1000 high yield and moderate yield question bank is superior to any oral board preparation book.

We regret that not all applicants for tutoring are accepted.

Richard McLuiew Bowers, James Skerst, Wandy Whoons.

YOLA - Your Ophthalmologists Los Angeles.

CONTACT INFORMATION: rbowers900@gmail.com

mcluiew-skerst-whoons.yolasite.com

rbowers900@gmail.com