How I Studied For The Echo Boards

All right, friends. Today I'm going to break down exactly how I study for echo boards um as a cardiology fellow. All the resources that I've used, basically how I studied, all the tips and advice for anyone who wants to take this exam in the future, and hopefully it's a little helpful to you guys. So, let's [music] get into it. Now, I know this may not be my typical video since I'm making it very specifically for cardiology and cardiology fellowship, but by the end of this video, I'll give you the entire stack of how I prepped, even give you an insight into my board prep Excel sheet. Kind of breaks down my entire study [music] schedule. And so, let's break it down one by one. So, a little bit of insight before I kind of get into the nitty-gritty of what my prep looked like. Now, I took my echo boards at the end of my third year. So, basically after I graduated cardiology fellowship, there are a lot of programs who [music] their fellows will take it after their second year. For me, I was recommended by my mentors to just wait till I graduated. That's when I'll have the most echo [music] time to do it and there's no necessarily rush to be echo boarded after you finish second year. Just do whatever your institution [music] may recommend. I definitely found it helpful to wait all three years because one, I got more echo training under me and two, I spent two months of my third year of fellowship doing congenital cardiology as well as just congenital [music] echo. And so that made that section of the exam feel a lot more doable versus feel like complete left [music] field. A lot of things like TEEES I got a lot of experience during my second and third year of doing and so [music] those kind of clips from the test felt understandable like what I was looking at versus if I hadn't done as many then I'm having to like kind of memorize how things would go. So I just had more experience under my belt. So taking at the end of my third year felt very doable, [music] but keeping with a caveat that I took a job where I'm not having to move. I'm not having to go across country. I'm not having to like move [music] out of my apartment. Staying here and my job is like 20 minutes away. And so the transition for me after graduation to taking echo boards, which is usually mid July, was minimal in terms of other lifestyle except one. And so it does come with a caveat that if you're going to move cross country, trying to take echo [music] boards while doing all of that can be a lot. And so maybe it makes sense to take it at the end of second year. Unlike other exams, there's only one date that you take it every year, maybe two, but at least one. Just make sure you're aware of what that date looks [music] like and logistically that it's doable for you. Now, the second thing for me is that I just had a kid [music] in April of this year. And so from April on to May, I was essentially on paternity leave where I did nothing cardiology related and [music] I was like very just focused on being present for my family, which was the right move except for studying for cardiology boards like echo boards. I [music] ended up doing a big mistake on my part, which is googling how long it most people study for the exam and hearing answers being up to like 3 to four to even like 5 [music] months in advance. And I was like, well, I have two and that's not good. And realizing that maybe you probably don't need 5 months, probably don't need even [music] 4 months, 3 months is probably like good. But there's just a lot of content within each of the resources that we'll talk about. I think [music] I had to do anywhere from like 1,200 to like 1,600 questions. There's like 50 video modules and what I ended up watching um in one of the resources each of them being 40 to 60 [music] plus minutes and so just a lot of volume to do and so that's really where echo boards requires time and attention. So if you're in cardiology fellowship on a real rotation and [music] you need to study then like 3 to 4 months is like very reasonable because it allows [music] you to pace yourself for the volume of content that you need to do. I had a kid and so like I wasn't going to study for echo boards during my paternity leave but I did have an elective [music] at the very end of fellowship and I had a few weeks off after graduation between now and the start of my new job where I was able to definitely give more hours during that time but not everybody will. And so definitely be mindful of the amount of content and the resources you're going to use and [music] how much time you do. So if you're watching this and you have several months in advance and even a year plus until you take your echo boards, ask yourself when that prep will begin. And I'll kind of talk about that in the tips and advice section of this episode. But that's the biggest caveat for me is that I had a kid, but I had a lot of echo volume under me, but I still had to kind of go through this content to feel comfortable for the exam day cuz it's notoriously known to be one of the hardest cardiology board exams. And I'll talk about why in in this episode. So, let's get into how exactly I prepped for this exam. So, I basically started studying in May. And so, I use May and June for majority of the exam with a little like week [music] in July to prep. And so first I'm going to talk about the resources I use. The first thing [music] being that book that I share the start of the video. This is Klein. This is probably [music] like the most popular resource for questions that people use. I think this one's like the second edition or something. Um there's probably a new one out. Um and it comes with the ebook which is really what I use. I actually didn't use the the [music] physical copy. The ebook is nice because you get to actually watch the videos and clips just like [music] the board exam will have a lot of clips and videos for you to be like there's a wall motion there's aneurism [music] or this is the diagnosis whatever it may be but this is like a go-to resource it is probably on par to a little bit more challenging than most of the questions on echo boards but there's like 1100 plus questions than just this alone and so it's a very good resource to kind of get all your bearings and foundation [music] it definitely kind of gets a little bit nitty-gritty on things that weren't included whatsoever on the board exam [music] But I'm sure that changes year to year. So it's a good place to start. You rather have your resource be tougher than the actual exam. But again, there's 1100 questions in here. And so to do them, [music] to review them is important. So this is probably the first resource. The second resource that I use is the Echo Mayo Review Board [music] series. It's essentially like a 48 video resource that is recorded by Mayo every year. You can do the live version [music] or you can get the recorded version. And so I watch them at my own pace. A lot of them, frankly, I watched them at like 3x [music] because, again, I was limited on time. And thankfully, I've been able to speed listen for quite some time throughout my medical training. That 3X felt doable, especially for a lot of the speakers. But the videos are pretty good. There are some that get a little bit more nitty-gritty into whatever the provider who's presenting it like knows about the disease. But for somebody who's going to be very cardiac imaging heavy, [music] like I just found it to be like a very nice refresher going into my new job instead of just board [music] prep. So, that's how I perceived it. But if you're like going to be an interventionalist who is like trying to just take your echo [music] boards, you may not need to know all that. So some of it may just feel a little too dry. But you do have to go through it. So that's one of the biggest tips on the video resources. [music] Start as early as possible. Ideally as you're doing your accurate rotation if you have access to them and get through them and then come back to the [music] videos and topics that are challenging. I didn't start them when I was in fellowship. That was definitely like a a blunder on my part. But I had really good training from my mentors [music] and teachers and so I didn't feel like I needed the videos because I was getting good teaching and training there. But in hindsight, I should have started my uh review videos [music] as I was going through my co- rotation. Third resource that I used were the ASSE practice exams. [music] They're essentially two practice exam with 150 questions each that are supposed to be a little bit on par with the style of the questions that show up on exam day. Definitely felt it to be the most similar to the pace [music] and style of how the exam looked. You have some very short questions that you kind of read the question you just answer and then you have some more longer ones you have to watch a lot [music] of videos and later in the video I'll talk about the actual exam date stuff. I definitely recommend doing those just to get a variation of the questions that [music] come from it. I will show you guys my echo board Excel sheet that I created and where I kind of parked those practice exams to really [music] understand like how ready I was. Those were helpful and the same thing as I did for Klein. Anything I missed [music] I turned into flashcards so I could review those mistakes. The fourth resource that I used was Echosap. Basically, we got all the questions for cardiology fellowship and that included Echosap, which I think has like a 100 to 200 questions [music] on par tend to be a little bit easier than anything else that you take, but do ask some different questions and I felt easier to get through, but more practice was [music] always helpful. So, I did those and um same thing made flashcards for anything that I [music] missed. The next resource that I used was kind of a PDF on how to master a mode for echo. And this [music] is called a FGEN bomb mode paper. I think it's like 12 or 13 pages. Most institutions will be able to give you access to it or somebody who's taken the echo boards may be able to get you a PDF for it. It's very nicely written. It's very easy written and it's [music] actually like doesn't take too long to get because a lot of it is just pictures. Um some of the pages are just [music] images and examples. My only frustration with the actual resource is that figure 10 would be talked about on this slide or this page, [music] but then it'd be like three pages down. So, it just didn't line up like nicely with each other. So, you to kind of find what it's talking about, find example, and then come back to start reading. Not the biggest issue, but that was very helpful um to just [music] see some examples. And I made those into flashcards as well using my next resource being Remnote. Remnote was basically where [music] I carried all of the content that I was studying for. any misqu questions, any kind of like [music] outlines on documents that I reviewed as a fellow as well as during prep. And I made all of them into flashcards since by the end of it, I think I had like 2,000. Most of them were like crappy made flashcards for me where like quickly just like typing up something or screenshotting a question that I missed and [music] then making sure I knew the answer stone cold. And I reviewed them. That was like the main part of my study prep. I reviewed them daily just to [music] make sure I knew those very well. But I also used RemNote to then like use the AI function where I updated or uploaded my FG bomb mode paper and other kind of PDFs that I thought were helpful and said make AI flashcards from this because then in addition to [music] taking screenshots from those kind of papers for helping me for the board prep, I also had the extra flash cards that it [music] made me. So maybe I wasn't thinking about how many like hertz or what the frame rate was for M mode, but it thought it was [music] helpful. So then it became part of my flashcard review in case of like random questions show up on echo boards. Um so I found that to be very helpful. And if you're unfamiliar with Remnote, it's definitely a resource I've used [music] throughout Fellowship. Even if they weren't a partner of the channel, I would use them. It has made the biggest difference [music] for me. I like it much more than Ankey. And the nice thing is if you have Ani cards, you can convert them into Remnode. And if you have RemNote stuff, you can convert them back into ANI. But it just allowed me to include all the PDFs, all the outlines, all my notes, and then make selected things into flashcards and image occlusions. and with the AI function like it's significantly better in my opinion. If you want to try it out for uh a month [music] for free, the link down below will give you access to all their pro features. So you can give it a shot. But I really did feel um and I know have colleagues in fellowship too that once they start using it that's all they use for studying. If you feel like an isn't doing everything for [music] you, definitely give RevNet a try. Now let's talk about the actual prep. So this is the spreadsheet. basically that I make something like this for every board exam that I study for where I just list out all the resources that I need to kind of go through and just understand how much content is there. And so, for example, I mentioned [music] doing the Mayo board reviews videos. And so, this one had 48 videos and I put down how much time [music] each of the videos were because again, as a parent of two and as a newborn, I only had a certain amount of time to to review each day. So, it allowed me to understand like which [music] videos I could go to and how long it would take me if I sped it up. So, I was watching most of these at 3x, which is [music] like where this formula comes in. It's a 59minute video that I watched in like about 20 minutes. And so, allowed me to say, well, I have an hour to watch videos, like which videos can I get done. Similarly, I looked at all the client [music] sections and added all those questions that add up to 11:34. My math is right. And I tried to map out which [music] day of the week I would do them. As we'll quickly learn, this schedule was like rarely followed [music] to a T. often I was behind uh where I would may want to have done like three sections of questions but ended up doing like one maybe two. There's some days where my newborn was sleeping like and waking up every 2 to 4 hours and [music] so I was sleeping like 3 to 4 hours and so there's no way I could have studied in the morning effectively. So I prioritize sleep on those days. But this is [music] kind of the first thing that I did is I gathered all the questions and I would do the same for Echosap. This is not a spreadsheet worth [music] sharing because it's like really messy and just personalized to me. But I wouldn't recommend whatever resource you use of [music] just kind of listing this out cuz then you can visually just check it off and I like to green the stuff as I do them. But it just helps me understand [music] how to create a realistic schedule. Now the second page is something that I kind of used to map out what would I do going up to the exam. And so kind of put up how many question blocks I would do if I would do them in the morning or night. Kind of the last [music] part of my prep was really just finishing any of the videos. I think I [music] finished the videos with maybe like a week left. Probably not the best thing to do. you may want to give yourself more time to do those kind of the schedule I had. That's how I did it. And then I added all the extra [music] kind of videos or papers I need to read. This element physics kind of section that's floating out there. The fagen bomb mode paper and then the ASC [music] practice exam which I basically did like 2 to 3 days apart from each other. And it's 150 questions. So probably by itself requires its own study day as well as like reviewing your mistakes. [music] And as you can see, the majority of the time after I was done with the blocks of questions was just doing my miss questions in the form of flashcards through Remnote. But [music] this is kind of how I prepared and I adjusted. So this is the final calendar. This ASSE practice exam, I'm pretty sure was like [music] supposed to be up here and life happens and I had to like travel during this time slot. Uh my daughter's birthday was the day before my exam and so [music] you know I just had to prioritize like the test was much sooner than it was. But this was helpful. And the last kind of slide that I created [music] or the last tab was basically anytime that I would come up with something that I wanted to make sure before echo boards that I like reviewed because I would hate for it to show up on [music] the test day and I not like feel comfortable with it is I just made a list of everything that felt [music] not like super strong. Like I didn't use variance plots for example very well or like concept of sun myioardium. Some of these are things that I know, but like I just really wanted to make sure I knew very very well [music] going into task day. And so I just made a list of these topics and as I like went through them, I added links [music] of anything or just green them out. But this was kind of a reminder of a confidence booster cuz if the toughest topics [music] of the topics that I wanted to master felt okay, then everything else would be okay as well. But this spreadsheet was helpful. Definitely recommend you guys create one yourself or use AI to create one for you and not the one worth sharing. So, if you're going to ask in the comments if I can share this, um, it's pretty messy. It took me [music] not very long and I I used it during my entire prep and just kind of updated as I went through. [music] Um, so kind of create that own structure for yourself. And then the last part I'm going to talk about is basically [music] tips and practical advice on how to prep for the exam. And I kind of alluded to the strategy throughout [music] this whole thing, but the first thing you need to do is focus on doing as many questions as possible, assuming you're a busy cardiology fellow [music] in the midst of a busy rotation. And so the first thing is just making sure questions, questions, questions because the echo board exam [music] is very unique. There's a lot of content, but you get tested on the high yield content [music] for sure, but then there's just a lot of esoteric questions that are asked and that's like the biggest criticism for the exam is that there's something that comes from like the left field of left field. You know, like why like did you have [music] to ask a question like that or in that way or about this? Like no one cares. And so that's the biggest frustration is that people find that the test asks about the most minute details [music] that no one really teaches you about or relationships that like you may not think about. And sure, you could test about it for fun, but like come on, like it's not fair. On that point, the reminder is if you do more questions, the foundational stuff will be there because even when they ask all the esoteric stuff, the main point is when the stuff is easy, you want to get it right. And that's like what increases your chances of a pass. And so I felt like the things that were like straightforward, which it wasn't all of the exam, but the stuff that was straightforward, I knew how to answer or I felt like I did. And so the exam didn't feel overwhelming to me where like if you go on Reddit and you type in like Echo Board 2026, I like read that forum and people are like terrified [music] of how the exam went for them. And maybe I'm like over optimistic and I should be more pessimistic of my my performance. We'll find out. But I think it's because I focused on like do I know the the the fundamental stuff really well? And if I do then like the esoteric stuff [music] like I just gave my best effort and some of them I got right in hindsight some of it I probably did and that's okay. So doing more questions allows you to be prepared for that [music] because then the hard questions are just an opportunity to raise your points versus worrying [music] about that being the cause of you not passing. So do as many questions as possible client echosap asse people use like vital source. I didn't use that. Figure out the amount of time and availability you have. But the most important after that is point number two is turn your practice questions into a form of review that you could do. Being flash cards [music] is the easiest one in my opinion. Turn them into an cards if you need to. I loved RemNote because [music] I could have all of my practice questions in one place, turn them into flashcards, but also see them in like an outline form. Add [music] my PDFs, turn those into flashcards, but everything was in one place. So visually I could read those as an outline. Visually I [music] could do them as flashcards if I wanted to. And I didn't feel like I was losing out any functionality that Ani offers. and still I was able to do my flash [music] cards very nicely. I loved using RemNote for that reason. Again, the link's down below if you're interested in it. But making sure that you're doing your practice questions and doing those [music] as quickly as possible and early as possible versus waiting till the test gets closer to doing them because you're just going to have an overwhelming amount of of [music] cards to do. I did like two to three repetitions of my cards. So again, I had like 2,000 cards. And so [music] the last few days were just go churning through cards that I had missed in the past because the last thing you want on test day is to miss something that you knew [music] that you reviewed but just don't understandable enough. Minimizing the things that will trip you up on test day will help your confidence [music] helped me. Didn't feel like the exam was like overly difficult in that regard. Tip number three is to begin any video resource that you choose to use and do it early and particularly ideally with the echo rotations when you're on them. This to [music] turn through them. So, if you have 3 months of Echo or four months of Echo during your cardiology fellowship, watching, [music] you know, of those 48, you can watch like 15 of them, even more um when you're first starting out during your rotations will help you cuz then you can go back to the videos as you need to. You can watch them at even faster pace and like things will [music] start to click a little bit better. Don't do what I did, which is like watch them, you know, massive pace with like a month left before test day just cuz you had a kid, you have no other choice. So any video resource, my recommendation's always [music] been to start them early and I didn't take my own advice and I paid for it in terms of like time and sleep, but I do think that those videos were helpful to [music] like to want to do. Tip number four is just understanding how the test is organized. And this is something I didn't have the best grasp of and even the practice exams [music] don't do the best job of doing this. The ASC ones do a little bit. But on test day, it's very normal to have a question that's standalone that's like very quick like what is a frequency, what is a [music] period, what is a wavelength or like something like that where it gives you like a mathematical question of calculating something that's fairly easy. They just give you all the numbers and you have to know which ones to use. Those ones weren't too [music] hard. The ones that are timeconuming would be like this long vignette that they give you and then I kid you not, there will be like [music] 8 to 10 plus videos. And when you see something like that, you have to expect that they're going to ask you probably like two to even four questions [music] just from that case. And ASC when the practice exams probably have like maybe two questions per [music] those scenarios, maybe three, but like not more than that. And if they did give you video clips, the practice [music] exams may give you like four kind of clips to click through or like slightly more. But the exam had like few vignettes, [music] had tons of videos. And so from a time perspective, what I did probably worked in my favor was that I didn't try to watch [music] all of them at once. Instead, I looked at what the question was asking and then tried to find the videos and like screenshots from the echo that were relevant to the question. So if it asked me about diastologology, I went [music] to the things in the clips like their, you know, how big their atrium was, their TR velocity, whatever, [music] their tissue dopplers and looked for those and and answer the question. And then I went to the next question and you can always come back. The nice [music] thing is that if you happen to capture a picture or an image or a video that [music] may change your answer from a prior one, you can adjust it as needed. But don't try to watch all the videos and then answer your four questions because you may not need all of it or don't know exactly how it applies just yet. You're not reading the echo as you would for a patient. You're really trying to answer the question. There would be like videos [music] where you see a VSSD and some MR and maybe like an eusion and some [music] diastologology and you have no idea what they're going to ask. And so I rather like know what the questions are going to be and just answer them as you go and then [music] kind of evaluate um you know through the videos. So just be prepared of that. If you see like 10 videos of echo in a row, don't watch all of them. Look at the questions asking and then if you have to watch several then you need to do it right. Like I had question where they asked where the endocarditis was and I had to kind of go through and they had tons of options of combinations of where I saw it. for example, you know, was it on this leaflet or was it on [music] these two leaflets? And so I had to go through multiple images to kind of pair it and picture it together, [music] but I didn't need to go to all of the images. If I didn't see a vegetation, I moved on. Or if that wasn't in the answer choice, I didn't even click on that part of the videos. If it didn't ask about the tricuspid valve, I didn't watch the tricuspid video or until like I had to ask or answer a question on it. And so that saved me a lot of time from reading the forums. I think it costs a lot of people a lot of time. And don't expect these clips to be like the super high qualities. [music] I've definitely been used to high quality and low quality. And so I didn't feel like the video qualities were [music] like super unfair. Some people did. And so don't expect all the video clips to be like the best [music] of quality. Some of may be very old clips or old end mode kind of images. You just have to be ready for that. [music] I was just taking your best guess. And the final tip that I would give you is just pace yourself and your timing and confidence. Again, if you build your foundation strong [music] from all the practice questions and all the resources, then you will still have the esoteric stuff that'll just like but really the [music] way I looked at it and I think that helped my confidence as I walked in with false optimism is that I was expecting questions to be [music] difficult unnecessarily. And if I answer those correctly, my points just went higher. And so, but if I found something where like this is something I reviewed and studied, then I just like cool like points game. And so the test felt more of like can [music] you answer the easy stuff quickly and then give yourself a chance of answering the difficult [music] stuff. And that gets into the final phase is that while you balance your confidence, balance your time. [music] As the making of this episode, there's five sections on the test, each being 40 questions, 54 minutes. And so in my head, I was like, well, that's like a minute and a half or something, give or take. And so I told myself the halfway point being approximately 20 questions, I wanted to be done with more than half the amount of time. So I basically said by 30 minutes left, so approximately [music] after 24 minutes, I wanted to be past question 20. And then that allowed me to finish all my questions as well as come back and review all the ones that I had marked and then review [music] all of them. I never felt rushed and that's mainly because I still had enough time to review my mistakes. And I think most sections I [music] had like two to five minutes left even after reviewing all of them once more just making sure I was like sure with [music] my answer choice or like comfortable with what I put. There are a few sections that may have felt a little bit more rushed than others, [music] but that structure helped me. And so having a mental time clock of when you want to be at the halfway point. Reading the question first, there was very few vignettes that like made [music] the difference for me from like answering the question correctly or not. Often you can make the diagnosis by looking at the image, looking at the question, and then just looking at your vignette to say, is there anything here that would change my answer and also make something else correct? [music] Maybe there's like one thing here and there that helps me kind of speed through the exam a little bit faster and have more time for those calculationheavy questions cuz you will have those and those questions where there's just so many clips per one vignette and you just want to make sure you're not missing some subtlety that would change the final answer. So, as a [music] review, run echo boards like I do for every exam. Run it like a system. Pick your resources. Plan it [music] out as quickly as possible. ideally three to four months using your echo rotations to get through those busy resources of your [music] videos and then even some of the question resources um and beginning to do those so that way you [music] can like have more time to repeat them. And do you need to like look through the guidelines necessarily? [music] No. A lot of these ANI cards that are floating out there have some of those cut offs for the guidelines. Those cut offs also show up on the board exam questions that you'll be using anyways. And so I didn't go through any guideline papers to study for [music] the echo boards. And I still felt like that to be okay. If you want even more help on how to study for cardiology boards for fellowship, particularly [music] cardiology as I'm making this video, we're kind of working on our master class of how to prepare for cardiology fellowship and doing it at a high level. How to just succeed in fellowship in general. This [music] will be included as like its own standalone workshop, which you guys can check out down below, but also as part of our white cut OS program. So, if you want access to that workshop plus everything else we've made in the future, that'd be your best bet. Or you can just go ahead and grab the [music] workshop as a standalone. Hopefully, that helps you guys out for anyone who wants more insight of how to like succeed on the entire journey, not just one [music] test. But this is an insight of kind of how deep dive I like to get into each individual kind of section. So again, if you want the entire system laid out just like this instead of piecing it together for yourself and adding that extra anxiety and [music] stress that comes with it, go ahead and check out the white code OS or art workshop kind of page so you can see everything that I've created over the past 9 [music] years to help you on your journey. But hopefully friends, you found this to be helpful. Again, I haven't made very [music] cardiology specific videos on this channel, but I know that there's probably somebody like me who wish somebody did. So, if this was helpful, go ahead and comment down below, like the video, whatever it may be, and let me know in the comments what other kind of cardiology related things or fellowship related things you may want me to make future videos and episodes on, and if it's something that I'm interested in that I feel like can help you, then I'll I'll [music] definitely be sure to do so. But as always, my friends, thank you so much for being a part of my journey. Hopefully, I was a little help to you guys on yours. Make sure to like, subscribe, and follow [music] for more content just like this one. And as always, I will see you guys in the next one. Peace.