OCS exam

I am finally finished my exam!  Yipeeeee!!!

To back up, because I know it's confusing, this was the OCS exam to become an 'Orthopaedic Certified Specialist'.  For me, passing the exam would be a great personal achievement because it is a nationally recognized title in the USA.  I started a fellowship in manual therapy in Canada and completed 3/5 of it, gaining the title of 'Resisdent' or RCAMPT, but that means nothing in the USA, and will become meaningless in Canada in the upcoming years also.  I finished the 4/5 part here in the USA, but completing the whole fellowship process would have been extremely expensive and difficult.  There are not a lot of manual therapists in the Boulder area, which has been a real disappointment for me as a PT since moving here.

So this exam seemed like a great plan B.  A way to get recognition for all the courses I have done, without doing a full expensive/intensive fellowship program.

Paying for membership dues and exam fees amounted to about $2000, of which my company paid $1000.  Then I had to decide what material to study and if I would take a formal prep course.  I decided to study on my own from two resources: 'Secrets of Ortho PT' book and an at-home study course called 'Current Concepts in Orthopaedic Physical Therapy'.  These cost about another $750.  The first book was full of  a lot of random details that did not seem applicable (types of anemia, for example) and I don't think it was a good investment.  The 'Current Concepts course' was very helpful and prepared me decently for the exam.  I also felt like I learned a lot doing that and that it has made me a better clinician.  Each week I would tackle a new body part: neck, shoulder, thoracic spine/ribs, elbow, hand, jaw, lumbar spine, pelvis, hip, knee, foot/ankle.  I ignored the 'clinical reasoning' section, which I think was just fine, although there were certainly some research questions I did not know the answers to.  Also, studying the jaw was quite silly because I don't treat the jaw often and there were only a few questions on the jaw that I still wasn't confident in.  At the end of the 'Current Concepts' course, there was an online exam, which I completed, but it was not very similar to the OCS exam.

So the big OCS exam was scheduled at a Prometric testing site, where you register ahead of time and pick a time and location (available across the country) and I could pick my date between Mar 2-16.  I picked March 9, which happened to be a day that the front range of Colorado was scheduled to get anywhere from 5-18 inches of snow!  I wasn't entirely sure that the center would be open if such a storm materialized, but they did.

I did not know much about the exam itself and what to expect.  I had not attended any of the 'in person' prep courses that are held around the country because the travel would be so much extra money.  I didn't know anyone who had taken the exam.  There are no practice exams.  The syllabus you are given is very vague (eg. anatomy 10%, cervical spine 10%, etc).  I knew we had 7 hours to sit at a computer and complete 200 questions.  I knew each question was based on a patient case 'vignette' that required some reading, which is why so much time is given.  I knew that a passing grade was a scaled score of 600, but have no idea what formula gets you to that scaled score.  I knew we would be allowed breaks after we secured answers in at the end of a testing 'block', but I didn't know how many blocks or breaks there would be.  The idea of sitting at a computer for 7 hours without many breaks while 6 months pregnant and a snowstorm outside was not appealing.

I drove down to Denver Friday night to get a hotel room for $47.99 including everything.  I studied, had an ok sleep, and got up early for last minute review.  I arrived at the testing center at 7:30am for an 8:00 exam, and there were already many folks there.  I would guess 30 people had an 8am time slot for testing for various exams.  Unfortunately, checking us all in (metal detector, take our picture, sign in, check papers, get computer test to start) took quite a long time, and I didn't start my exam until 8:30am.  That already meant an extra hour of sitting around and waiting!

We had 2 blocks scheduled of 3 hours each with one 40 min break allowed for lunch.  I was disappointed to learn that and wasn't sure I could sit still and focus for 3 hours without a break.  After one hour I had ants in my pants and was dying for a break, but had only completed 40 questions of the first 100.  Ugh!  Anyway, I made it through my day and spent less than 5 hours actually completing the questions, and then drove home in the storm.  The storm wasn't so bad in the end, and the roads were ok despite poor visibility of blowing snow.

As I had read online by others, I'd say 80% of the exam was fair in the sense that it reflected ortho practice. The other 20% seemed random, and many questions were strangely written and confusing.  It reminded me very much of the Canadian and USA national licensing exams.  A lot of studying, stress, and hard work, and then after the fact wondering if I would have done the same whether I had bothered studying or not.

I won't find out my results until June.  I'm honestly not sure what to think, and I have no idea what makes a pass or a fail.  If a pass required a grade of 95% or more, I'd be confident that I failed.  If a pass was 70%, I'd be confident that I passed.  But who knows?  I'll have to wait and see if I get those letters behind my name or not.

Until then, I need to get the rest of my life in order.  Start exercising again. Put the house back together.  Not study!

A more fun blog will be posted shortly with all the adventures we've had with this storm, including playing in the snow with Rachel.