Like most Board Certification examinations, the proving ground for psychiatry covers two areas.  Part I makes sure that the candidate has the ‘facts’– all of the things that are picked up during residency didactics and personal reading, including the different types of aphasia (ick), the metabolic derangements that affect brain development (ugh), or the specific pharmaco-kinetics of each therapeutic agent (I actually like that stuff!).

If you are reading this after searching for ‘part II preparation’, you have made it– you won’t neeed to really memorize that material for another ten years– for recertification! (sorry).

Part II is different– you need a totally different set of skills.  You need to think on your feet.  You need to diagnose on the ‘fly’.  You need a bit of confidence.  You need the basics down cold.

That is why I focus on these recordings so much– they are 90% of what you need!  They improve the basics– dramatically.  And they provide confidence–  Think about it–  think about how it would feel to KNOW, for CERTAIN, that the criteria will come to mind no matter how threatening the case?

If you can talk CRITERIA during the exam, and point out how the criteria match up with your patient, you are SET for Part II.