How I Studied for the Clinical Informatics Board Exam

Nine¹ high-stakes exams later, I finally feel confident in the best practices for exam preparation.

Zooming out, there are two types of studying: active and passive. Active learning refers to practice questions and flashcards. Passive learning refers to reading or watching study materials.

Active Learning

For high-stakes exams, active learning is the biggest factor in improving test-taking performance.

Active learning is better than passive for two reasons: 1) you are forced to think through the material and develop mental models, and 2) it simulates the exam. I'm not a neurologist, but you can practically feel the new neuronal connections as you think through a problem!

At the end of the day, the Clinical Informatics Board Exam is simply a series of exam questions. If you want to get better at answering exam questions, answer exam questions. That's why I studied using my homegrown questions, which then became the foundation of ciprep.pro.

Passive Learning

Passive learning, while important for building knowledge, is significantly less effective. However, when practice questions consistently show that you don't know the basics of a topic, there are several good resources. I divide them into free and paid:

• Free:
  • Wikipedia: for example, the page on Health Level 7 (HL7) covers several high-yield informatics topics, including the Open Systems Interconnection model and Arden syntax.
  • Pathology Outlines: though aimed primarily at pathologists, Pathology Outlines has CI topics on databases, lab information systems, and cybersecurity
• Paid:
  • ciprep.pro: by yours truly, the first online QBank for the CI Board Exam ($30-$130)
  • AMIA Clinical Informatics Board Review Course: a virtual (or in-person) course with lectures, and review questions ($850-$1960)
  • Clinical Informatics Study Guide (Finnell) - this was my favorite comprehensive textbook. A study guide in name only, it's 443 pages. Make sure to get the newest edition (~$70 on Amazon)

There are other good resources out there (and I'll add them over time), but these are the most common to start.

Timing

How much time does it take to study for the exam? If you completed a fellowship (and were presumably immersed in informatics), then I would allot 1 month of daily studying (at about 15-20 hours per week).

If you applied via the practice pathway, or feel like your fellowship didn't cover everything, I would allot 2 to 6 months, depending on your outside commitments.

For the average day, I like the 80/20 rule, where 80% of my time is active (questions, self-made flashcards), and 20% is passive based on the questions I didn't understand.

There isn't much out there yet about studying for this exam, but I know you'll do well if you stick to the tried-and-true principles of active learning.