Made it to Hays, KS

I finished taking my boards yesterday. Hopefully that means I'm done with that for a couple of years. It was a worse experience this time. The questions were worded more poorly than last year's exam. There were some questions whose answer choices didn't provide enough information to distinguish which one was the right answer. Plus, they had a billion Chapman's reflex points questions (AKA someone who has illness A supposedly should have a musculoskeletal tenderspot on point X2 on their body; it's simply easier, quicker, and more precise to listen to their symptoms and do a good physical exam than rely on these spots, they add nothing diagnostically to the health visit). First of all, learning these is a complete waste of time because they are NOT used in the area of medicine, even with those specialized in OMT. They are merely osteopathic trivia questions perpetuated by academia and placed in national boards for questions in attempts to validate the teaching and learning of them. This Step 2 of the boards which I just took is intended to supposedly test more on the clinical side of medicine, where-as step 1 was more basic sciences. I've never muddled through a more clinically irrelevant set of testing before in my life. There was a hugely disproportionately high number of UTI and OB/GYN questions and low number of cardiopulmonary and GI questions. I swear 50% or more of the questions asked either about women's health or chapman's points. I'm not saying that women's health is not important, but in terms of real-world numbers of cases seen in clinic, this testing does not accurately reflect the proportion of knowledge base of a physician who should be able to recognize heart disease, lung disease, and GI pathology which are way more common, deadly, and more of a negative impact on quality of life than chapman's points. Two thumbs WAY down on this one.

Whew! Sorry about that rant. Had to be done. I just hope I passed so I don't have to muddle through that again.

I left KC, MO last night. I'm in Hays, KS. Only 12 more hours of driving and I'll be in Richfield, UT with my sweet wife and beautiful children! I'm excited.