Does anyone know how ABOS Part II is scored? I felt great about all the cases and got creamed on indication for one of them. Any insight would be appreciated.
In each of your 3 rooms there were 2 examiners each of whom give you their own grades (not a cumulative grade per room). All of the grades are then reviewed and analyzed via a computer program to determine if some graders are "stricter" compared to others who are "softer". Having 1 bad grade from an individual examiner will not doom you to failure!
Thank you for your prompt reply. Just a few more questions if you have insight on this:
In the regulation book, they mention 9 points the examiners look for in two separate groups. Does each examiner give two scores based on each of those two lists, or one cumulative score?
Also, does it matter if the examiners go over one, two or three cases?
If one examiner covers multiple cases, are multiple scores submitted?
I emailed Shep Hurwitz, MD - Executive Director of the ABOS to ensure an accurate response to this question - here is his reply:
Each examinee presents one of their cases. There are 2 examiners for each case and they each give a score for information gathering, diagnosis, treatment plan, skill, outcome and applied knowledge. That means there are 6 evaluations per examiner per case. Then, at the end of the session each examiner gives a single score to the examinee for indications, complications and ethics. So if a candidate presents 3 cases â each examiner will give 18 scores based upon the six elements of each case and 3 aggregated scores for the indications, complications and ethics. Total would be 21 scores. If all 10 cases are presented the number of scores would be 120 ( 2 scores for each of 10 cases for 6 examiners)for the cases and 18 for the other aggregate items.
