Anesthesiology Examination 〈Fresh · 2025〉

But the real work is psychological. To pass the ABA Applied Exam, you must learn to talk while thinking. You must narrate your crisis management out loud, as if the examiners are invisible cameras recording your every hesitation. The exam itself is a masterpiece of sadistic design. It is divided into two parts, taken over two separate days, often months apart.

“The hardest part isn’t the knowledge,” says Dr. Maya Hersh, a third-year resident at a major academic center in Boston, six weeks before her exam. “It’s the format . In real life, if a patient’s blood pressure drops, you have vitals, a history, a physical exam, a nurse telling you what just happened. On the exam, you get a one-sentence stem: ‘A 45-year-old with a history of GERD and obesity is undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Five minutes after insufflation, SpO2 drops to 82%. What do you do?’ ”

If the OSCE is a sprint, the SOE is a slow drowning. You sit across a small table from two senior anesthesiologists. They are not your friends. They are not your mentors. They have been trained to be stone-faced, to ask “What next?” and “Why?” and “Are you sure?” in a tone that implies you have already killed the patient. anesthesiology examination

For the next seven hours, their lives will be reduced to a series of flickering pixels: an ECG strip, a cryptic blood gas value, a simulated malignant hyperthermia crisis. The air smells of industrial carpet cleaner and anxiety. Outside, the sun is rising over Lake Michigan. Inside, it is always 2:00 AM in the ICU.

You describe your pre-op assessment. Airway? Mallampati class II. Labs? Not needed. Plan? LMA, propofol, maybe a femoral nerve block. But the real work is psychological

To understand what is happening in this room, you have to understand a paradox. Anesthesiologists are trained to be the calmest people in a storm. Their entire professional identity is built on the phrase, “Nothing surprises me.” Yet the board examination is designed to do exactly that: surprise them. Relentlessly.

For 24 hours, social media explodes. #AnesBoards trends on X (formerly Twitter). There are tears. There are champagne emojis. There are cryptic posts: “Two years. Two attempts. One pass. Never give up.” The exam itself is a masterpiece of sadistic design

You call for a blade. You attempt direct laryngoscopy. Grade III view.