My best advice for boards preparation is to be engaged and study throughout residency and study for practice. Then, during your last year, do a holistic boards preparation review using a few high-yield resources that work for your learning style. Additionally, try to see as many cases as you can. I’ve included lots of high-yield cases below.
For more detail info, check out my lecture on the topic (from ASCP National meeting Sept 2024): “Learning Anatomic Pathology and Preparing for the Boards”
This is a little old, but here is an interesting CAP Survey: Almost Everything You Wanted to Know About Pathology Board Exams but Were Afraid to Ask
Here is a great “Tweetorial” on preparing for the Boards by Dr. Youssef Farhat, MD. PhD.
Below are some practice quizzes that I’ve made using the amazing PathPresenter website:
Flashcards based on my notes can be found here.
Practice Board Exams:
Multiple choice, like the boards. Record your diagnoses on the website, which will grade your answers when you’re done. You can then review your selections with the answer sheet after submission to see the answers to the questions you got wrong.
These were created to mirror the old (“in person”) format (85 slides, for which you had 3.75 hours). Now, there are still the same number of slides and the timing is the same, but it is broken up into 3 sections. On average, you have ~3 min per slide, so, to stay “on pace” you should finish each of these in a little less than 2 hours.
Exam #1
Exam #2
Biannual Resident Slide Quizzes:
Open-ended fill in the blank questions. Record your diagnoses on the response sheet and then compare with the answers.
Spring 2020
Fall 2020
Response sheets with histories
Spring 2021
Fall 2021
Spring 2022
Fall 2022
Spring 2023
Fall 2023
Spring 2024
Some “Interesting Case” Conference Cases:
We had a weekly interesting case conference at UC Davis. During the pandemic we this online and sometimes using cases from PathPresenter. Here are some of the unlabeled cases with (fake) histories and then separately the answers so you can quiz yourself.
Interesting case conference 7/30/2020
Interesting case conference 8/6/2020
Interesting case conference 9/3/2020
Interesting case conference 9/10/2020
Interesting case conference 10/1/2020
Interesting case conference 10/8/2020
Interesting case conference 11/19/20
Interesting case conference 12/3/20
Interesting case conference 12/17/20
Interesting case conference 1/21/21
Interesting case conference 5/6/21
Interesting case conference 5/20/21
Interesting case conference 5/27/21 (Heart themed)
Interesting case conference 6/10/21
Interesting case conference 6/17/21
Interesting case conference 8/12/21
Interesting case conference 9/9/21
Interesting case conference 9/30/21
Interesting case conference 12/16/21
Cleveland Clinic Resident Session
Supplemental slides and Bonus cases
Interesting case conference 8/3/23
Last updated: 7/30/24