ASPS board certification — how do plastic surgeons approach the written exam?
I'm a PGY-6 plastic surgery resident finishing up my training and starting to think seriously about the ASPS board certification process. The written exam is my first hurdle and I'm trying to figure out how to structure my prep given how little free time I actually have during residency. Right now I'm getting maybe 45 minutes of focused study in on most weekdays, nothing on call nights.
My attendings have been vague about resources—most of them took boards years ago and the format seems to have changed. I've been going through Thorne and Grabb for the knowledge base but I'm not sure how well that maps to what's currently tested. My practice question scores are running about 65–68% and I have roughly 4 months before I'm planning to sit.
How much of the written exam is reconstructive versus aesthetic versus basic science? I'm stronger on reconstructive given my training rotations but I've spent less time in purely aesthetic cases. Does that distribution hold in the exam content or is it more balanced than I'm assuming?
Also curious whether people prep for oral and written simultaneously or focus on written first completely. The whole sequence feels overwhelming when you're still in clinical training.
I took the written boards about 18 months ago. The distribution felt roughly 40% reconstructive, 30% aesthetic, and 30% basic science and principles. Don't underestimate the basic science portion—wound healing, flap physiology, and tissue expansion principles showed up more than I expected.
Focus on written first. Trying to prep for oral simultaneously fragments your attention and the oral has a very different skill set—viva format is its own thing to practice.
Hand surgery and peripheral nerve topics tend to be tested more heavily than their clinical frequency suggests. If you rotated less on hand, budget some time there. Microsurgery principles also show up fairly consistently in the written portion.
Grabb and Smith is better aligned to boards content than Thorne in my experience. Work through the question banks specifically designed for plastic surgery boards—the general surgery ones don't translate well. At 65–68% with 4 months out you have room to improve significantly if you get consistent study sessions in.
The 45 minutes a day approach works if it's truly focused—no multitasking, no half-studying between patients. Quality matters more than total hours at this stage.