Hello everyone! If it seems like it’s been a long time since I blogged, it has. I had to take a break because my adorable (fact, not opinion) 11 month old daughter has kept me more than busy! This is a whole new work-life balance challenge for sure!
Since I feel like I kinda got my “groove” back finally, I was able to complete the ASHP Core Therapeutic Module Package. One of the advantages of this product was that the release date was in 2016, but the due date is in 2017 (March 15- hurry!). This helped me out significantly since I didn’t need any more recertification credits in the first 4 years of my recertification cycle, and now that it’s 2017, I’m in the last 3 years, so it would count! As a reminder, ASHP provides the recertification products to me for free since I’m a recertification ambassador, but the opinions below are completely my own.
I did complete one of the very first Core Therapeutics Modules when I was preparing for the BCPS exam, and this was similar in structure with a few enhancements. The general format is a recorded “lecture” on a given topic; this module’s topics were cardiac arrhythmias/ACLS and selected ID topics. The first enhancement was THE HANDOUTS. Oh my goodness, these handouts are detailed and a great resource that I will use going forward. They are in outline format as well as a copy of the presentation slides. Also, the ability to stop and restart the videos (and restart halfway through) is a great feature since I can’t always have 1-2 hours uninterrupted. Both presenters did a good job of incorporating many patient case examples into their presentations. Overall, I was very happy with the quality of the videos and handouts.
The assessment was 22 questions with a passing rate of 72% (16 answers correct). Overall, I thought the questions were fair, lots of case-based questions. There were 2 sets of 2 questions each on the ID topics that built on each other (so if you missed the first one, you would likely miss the second one). I didn’t care for the possibility of missing 2 questions because of 1 mistake. Also, because I’m an ID specialist and taught one of the ID topics recently to my students, I recognized that one question technically had 2 right answers based on a widely recognized set of guidelines that the presenter did not refer to (he did refer to another set of widely recognized guidelines which made the question have only 1 right answer). I ran into this problem when sitting for the BCPS exam- a specialist in a particular area may know “too much” about a given question. It’ll be interesting to see if this continues with the ID Board Certification exam. But in the end, I passed the assessment (yay!).
I do recommend the Core Therapeutics Module for anyone seeking Recertification credit. It’s not necessarily my favorite recertification product (that’s still the literature reviews), but it was a good refresher on arrhythmias and ID! Enjoy March Madness everyone, and I hope I’ll be able to blog again soon!
-Lindsey