Yes indeedy, I passed the boards! I was soooo relieved and am really enjoying rejoining my life, already in progress.
The exam was a challenge especially at the beginning. I had heard that they will stack harder questions at the beginning, I guess to just shake your confidence? Anyway, I found that to be true. The first 20 questions were hard and I felt like I was getting most of them wrong. Then I regained my confidence and stride and hit lots of questions which were really obvious and I started to feel a little better. I decided to go through all the questions and go with my gut and then go back through and review all the questions. Some of the ones I was stuck on, I read with a clearer head the second time through and would notice a word or phrase that helped me decide on an answer with a clearer rationale for choosing it.
I was surprised to see very few medication questions, I had thoroughly reviewed antibiotics and their coverage and didn't get a single question about them. I can't say that I felt like I got a lot of questions in one particular area...a few thyroid questions, a few cardiac murmur questions, some growth and development, some female GYN, headaches, abdominal pain. There were also some on follow up...what interval would you follow up, would you follow up or should you refer? I would say the difficulty was on par with the reveiw questions I had done but there were a few that I had not encountered any of the terms and really had to guess including one about identifying a breast mass. The choices were fibroadenoma, papillomatosis, mammary ductal etresia, and ductal papilloma. I had no clue at the time but looked it up when I got home and the correct answer would have been fibroadenoma.
Even after the secondary review, I finished with about an hour to spare, luckily test taking time frames have never been an issue for me. I was so so happy to see that I had passed, I started shaking and my eyes welled up with tears. This is truly the end of a very very long road. I was emotional for the rest of the day, I am back to my mantra of 'I can't believe it's over'.
I can finally focus on the remainder of my pregnancy and getting things ready for baby Y. I hope she gives me a little time to enjoy my new found freedom!
I am so glad that you passed! It's a strange feeling when you realize that you are actually finished. Relief then somewhat of a letdown later. I am still sitting on whether or not to go back and do the DNP but until it gets me something more than more student loans, I'll wait.
ReplyDeleteI'm so relieved the boards are done, I haven't had free time like this in years! I'm with you as far as the DNP, I'm not sure what value it would add. In fact, at the end of my program they said that if we intend to practice clinically, there is no need to get a DNP. I think the only way I would consider it (in the very distant future) is if it had additional clinical training but it seems purely academic to me at this point.
ReplyDeleteAwesome - Congrats!
ReplyDeleteAnd for those of you contemplating the DNP, come on in, the water is fine :-)
Stephen