Educated and Certified.

Back in May I took a computerized exam to become a Board Certified Specialist in Pediatrics. The exam is a computerized simulation.  You get nine questions. Yes, I said NINE. Each question is a case study.  You're introduced to it with a nice little diddy about the kiddo and then it says "what information would you need to gather to complete your assessment?" You look down and there's a list of no less than 15 items. Once you check something, you cannot uncheck it. You lose points for selecting answers that might cause harm to the patient OR that are deemed unnecessary and might cost your institution time and money.  You receive no points for an answer that doesn't harm the patient or cost extra time and money, but it isn't relevant to complete your assessment.  You receive awesome points if you select answers that are appropriate for you to make a complete assessment.

Each question has about 10 parts to it.  You're scored in two areas: Information Gathering (IG) and Decision Making (DM).  IG is just that - gathering information to build your assessment.  Selecting probing questions instead of just Yes/No answers.  DM is what you do with that information. For instance, if a selection revealed that kiddo goes home with grandma every night and that's where kiddo's blood sugar is getting screwed up and you choose an intervention that doesn't involve grandma in any way, you're going to lose points.

They also had selections in there that - for an untrained person - would sound correct.  For example, a teen comes to you just diagnosed with Type 1 DM, what information would you collect to perform your assessment? Glucose Tolerance Test could be a selection.  Some of you out there might be like "oh, yeah! GTT, perfect!" because you do a GTT for pregnant women to check for Gestational Diabetes. No my friends... See you already know they have a Type 1 DM diagnosis, over loading them with glucose is far from appropriate and could potentially kill them.  They had tricky stuff like that in there.

So my 9 case studies took all of an hour and a half to complete - no going back, remember? Once you're done, your computer basically says "have a nice day!" and you get to leave.  You have no idea if you passed/failed/totally sucked.  Scores are sent to you 6-8 weeks after the close of the testing window.  The exam is only offered twice a year - May and November.  I came home last night and found an envelope from CDR on the counter. I cringed because I KNEW I screwed up the cystic fibrosis kiddo big time.  Apparently I perfect scored enough of the other questions to make up for the CF kid.

My credentials are now: MS, RD, CSP, LDN

I can't say thank you enough to my friends and family who had faith in me and supported me the entire way and never let me give up. I love you all.

P.S. If you combine Louisiana and Mississippi, there are less than 20 RD's with this certification and now I'm one of them!