how to start again after failing the CHT exam
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[00:00:00] Hey there, it's Hoang Tran with Hand Therapy Secrets. I wanted to come on today to talk about what most people don't want to hear about, but is really necessary to talk about, and that's talking about failing the CHT exam. It's funny cuz I did a poll on Instagram, so I don't know if you guys follow me.
[00:00:22] I'm really active on Instagram sharing polls and stories and stuff like that. And then thank you. If you're watching this either on YouTube or if you're listening to this on our podcast, I thank you for taking the time to listen. So I took a poll about who wants to really hear. Or learned about what you can do if you have failed the CHT exam and everyone's Nope, I don't wanna, I don't wanna hear about it.
[00:00:48] But then I get the private messages, right? So it just the difference of what I see on online of what people wanna see, but then they'll privately message me and say, this is what's going on.[00:01:00] I failed the c h d exam again, whether it be the first time, the second time, the third time, so on and so on.
[00:01:09] Everyone has the feeling of for the most part, of anger, frustration, disappointment A certain sadness about it, it can totally wreck your, kinda like your self-esteem, your confidence. And I hear a lot of, what I hear a lot is I'm a good therapist. Of course you are. Of course you are.
[00:01:36] You are inherently a good therapist. By the mere action that you take to study and learn and improve your skills and your craft as an occupational therapist, as a physical therapist in the specialty of hand therapy. And I want, I wanna say that, and I wanna, I. Try to say it over and over again.
[00:01:56] You are a good therapist. You are a great therapist. You are [00:02:00] a caring therapist. You are a therapist that delivers results for your patients. Passing. The CHT Exam has absolutely nothing to do with whether you are quote unquote, a good therapist or not. And I just want to bring that to light because it's something that I hear a lot and it's actually the unspoken Emotion or feeling like when you fail, you think I failed because I'm not a good therapist.
[00:02:29] And when you internalize that, I think it could really wreck havoc to a certain extent on how you think about yourself and how you might progress when you take the exam again. So I wanna give, hopefully in this podcast, share some. Some tidbits with you in terms of what you could do to help you either think or actually take, steps and actions that can help you, move forward [00:03:00] to passing.
[00:03:00] The biggest difference between the A O T A board, like the board passing the boards is when you pass the boards. It allows you to work, right? You get this degree, but you can't work unless you pass the boards. Now, there's a certain amount of people who fail the boards and that's okay.
[00:03:21] It's, it happens and you pick yourself back up because there's a certain pressure fire need to utilize your degree. And take the exam and pass and you take it as many times as you need in order to pass. The CSG exam is a national board certification exam, but it, you don't have to have it, right?
[00:03:47] So it no longer is a need. It's a want. I want to have it. I want to have it because of what it means to me personally. I want to have it cuz what it means to me professionally. [00:04:00] I want to have it because of what it tells other people about me. So though you don't have to have it, you want it.
[00:04:08] Say that it's okay, I want what I want because I want it. That's a line that I use often. Cuz why not? Why not me? When I'm doing hard things I, when I'm doing hard things, I look and say, I'm not the first person doing it. I'm also not gonna be the last person doing it.
[00:04:27] So why not me? And then once you make that decision, the hardest thing is making the decision to, to do it again, right? So some people have that really hard I don't know, this is the third time I'm doing it. I'm not doing it anymore. Like this is it. I'm too old. I failed too many times.
[00:04:45] I'm a really good therapist. Has absolutely nothing to do with that. Has nothing to do with age, has nothing to do with whether you're a good therapist or not, and has nothing to do with how many times you've taken it. All right? Has noth Now, here's the thing with how [00:05:00] many times you've taken it, right?
[00:05:02] What you wanna do is in my mind, in my opinion, you want to give yourself a chance of taking it back to back. You wanna give yourself a chance of taking it back to back. What happens is people study, they fail, and then they put distance between the time that they studied the first time to the second time I didn't study for two years, five years, seven years, 10 years, and then they take it again as if it was almost expectations of a person who's studied and done it back to back.
[00:05:33] So I just want you to keep that in mind. If you're somebody who's taken it before, but you took it years ago please don't hold that, don't hold that against yourself, right? It's been a long time in between, right? You've done other things. You've grown as a person. You're not the same as you were seven years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago.
[00:05:52] Doesn't really matter, right? Doesn't really matter. So the biggest decision I think is, do [00:06:00] I take it again? Yes or no? Make that decision. It's a personal decision. Do you take it again? Yes or no? I can tell you right now, majority of the people want to take it again. What happens is fear stops him.
[00:06:14] Fear of failing again. Fear of being judged. Fear of failing, fear of what other people will say, think and do. But if you're, if you allow yourself to say yes, right? Here's the thing. If you say no, then done, we're done. Then be done with it. That's what I say. If you're gonna say no, then be done with it.
[00:06:41] Stop putting that expectation on yourself right now if you want to say yes, right? Then the second step is you, what I believe is yet you need to analyze your study, and then you need to [00:07:00] analyze your score, right? So that's essentially one of the things that I do. I analyze how people are studying and then I analyze the score.
[00:07:09] Because it's only through analysis that you're gonna figure out where the gap is and then have a chance to be able to execute it. Take it back to your patients if you evaluate them, and then you do, range of motion edema, wound care scarring, exercise, home exercise program in a month's time, what do you do?
[00:07:36] You do a progress note, you reevaluate them. Do that several months, and then you're still not getting the results that you want. You need to reevaluate, don't you? What's not working? What is working? Maybe the thing that's working, I need to do a little bit more of, right? Instead of jumping from things to thing, a lot of therapists think, oh, I have to throw 10 things at this [00:08:00] person.
[00:08:01] In order to get results, but in actuality, if you did five things really well and you'd slowed down and you did them really well, for example, range of motion getting end range of motion is key majority of the time, right? Getting end range of motion, majority of the time is key in order to get rid of the pain, in order to get better movement, in order to get stronger, right?
[00:08:24] So don't we do that, don't we as therapists do that, we analyze our patients, we do a progress note, and then we say, okay, what's where? Where are we still missing? And looking at range of motion. Oh, you're missing two centimeters from the distal palmer crease, and we wanna be able to tuck it all the way in, right into the distal Palmer crease.
[00:08:43] So that's the gap that we're missing. What do we need to do to achieve those things? And then on that we have to execute and then we have to execute well. So this therapist has to execute. The patient has to execute, like it's a combined effort, right? In order to get the results that you want. [00:09:00] So the same goes with when you're studying study for the C H T now, and no, this is the part where you have to be honest with yourself.
[00:09:10] I've had, people fail by, Only a mere points, and they're like, I don't understand why I failed. This is what I did. Everything I did was right. Blah, blah, blah. But there's something if you failed, there's something that you didn't do right? And instead of saying all the things that you did it's important.
[00:09:28] It's important to look at that. But then you have to look at the things that you didn't do right, in order to close that gap. And usually in the conversation it comes out that, oh, I actually didn't study the topic that I am most intimidated with. I didn't study the topic that I struggle the most with.
[00:09:49] So one of the things that I hear often is let's say shoulders, right shoulders is a weakness for a lot of OTs. Sometimes it's due to a limited [00:10:00] experience, right? Doesn't matter what it is, that's your weakness. And if that's your weakness and you don't work to understand the concepts Then you will have a hard time answering those types of questions on the exam.
[00:10:14] So then it's oh, I actually didn't really study that. You, it's human nature. It's human nature not to do the thing that is the hardest. It is human nature to not want to do the thing that is least enjoyed. So what do you need to do to gap, to To bridge the gap is usually what I say.
[00:10:36] So if you've decided, yes, I want to continue, I want to give myself a chance, I want to increase my chances, and then this is for you and keep listening. All right, so let's go over. How do you analyze? So one of it is studying, right? Sometimes people tell me I studied really hard this time. I studied really hard and I felt [00:11:00] like I did really well.
[00:11:01] I studied really hard and I studied all the topics. So the question is really, did you right? Did you really study? I don't doubt that you studied hard, right? They're studying hard and then they're studying smart, like studying EF effectively or efficiently. A lot of questions I get.
[00:11:23] It's like, how many hours should I be studying? I don't know. How many hours do you need to study in order for you to understand? Because sometimes we can be studying, we can look like we're studying and we haven't done shit. I've done that. I've sat here and I've studied the books and an hour or two later I'm like, I still don't understand it.
[00:11:41] It's cuz I didn't really study. I was looking at it. I was pretending like I was reading it. But my mind was probably jumping all over the place. So if you are studying like that, [00:12:00] then that's ineffective and inefficient and it's not gonna help you. I'm really sorry. But that's the truth, right? So part of it's you have to explore how do you study in a way like, How do you study in a way that's gonna help you the most?
[00:12:20] Versus studying because studying in the way that other people study because that's what they did to pass and that's what you think you need to do to pass, right? I used to sit there. It's just cuz the way schools teach you. I used to sit there and think that I needed to memorize everything, so I struggled quite a long time.
[00:12:42] Through all of schooling. Cuz I sat there and I had, I thought I had to memorize everything and actually I think I studied for the c h t like that way and it was, it's hard. And then it was only through me teaching other people that I realized, huh, I actually [00:13:00] don't learn that when I just sit there and memorize.
[00:13:05] You have to come to terms with. How you are as someone who studies? I actually do well visually and kinesthetically. I'm actually a kinesthetic learner and I do well when I understand concepts. So I understand concepts first, and then I dive into the details. So if you've never watched any of my videos as the first videos, and then check out my YouTube channel, hand Therapy Secrets, and you're gonna see how I teach.
[00:13:34] We in hand therapy, we have cheat sheets. As you're studying, have cheat sheets. Your hands, right? Your wrists, your elbow, your shoulders. You can draw on them, you can palpate them. You can get familiar with your own body. You can get familiar with what normal looks like, what normal feels so that you can understand abnormalities and trauma.
[00:13:56] All right so use it to your advantage. I know there's a lot [00:14:00] of gadgets and lots of apps and lots of fancy things that make studying really enticing, but you can't bring those things into exam or with you, but they can't tell you to leave your arms behind. They're with you. So study off of them, right?
[00:14:17] So look at how you study, right? Look at how you're studying to see, what needs to change, what needs to be tweaked. What needs to change or what needs to be tweaked. So don't think that you have to do everything new. So here is oh, okay. So then, after some of those things I might, I'll look at the score, right?
[00:14:38] I'll look at the score and I'll analyze the score. So here's how I usually do the breakdown of the score. If you are less than if you are less than five points away, if you're less than five points away, I believe that you know a lot of shit. I believe that a [00:15:00] lot of information.
[00:15:01] But. Where you struggle, right? Here's devils in the details, devils in the details here, right? If you're less than five points away, you've got to get into the devil and you've got to get into the details of it, right? So you look at your score and you analyze where, what's your area of strength and what's your area of weakness?
[00:15:23] You can use area of strength to lift yourself up a little bit more and then dive into Your areas of weakness and tie it. Tie it to your strength, right? I'll give you an example.
[00:15:40] Majority of the time people scores, majority of the time people score low under treatment. Treatment is the largest domain of the exam. And what happens is they sit there and they're, they memorize everything. Like I have memorized all the names, I have memorized all the [00:16:00] anatomy, I have memorized all the protocols.
[00:16:03] I have memoriz, like I have memorized all the. The surgeries and the sutures and the blah, blah, blah. So then there's scores pretty high in the general knowledge, like I've memorized everything. But where they falter is in their, essentially in their decision making when it comes to treatments or when it comes to complications.
[00:16:21] What's the protocol and stuff like that. A lot of times, especially as a certified hand therapist, what they're testing you for is like your ability to make decisions and pick the best answer, right? So because you do best answer, like in the therapy clinic, you can try a bunch of different things cuz you have time to, you have time to experiment with your patients.
[00:16:42] I tried this and it worked, I tried this, it didn't work. So I'm gonna try something else. Because there's many ways in which to get improvements for your patients, right? On the exam, it's very specific of that timestamp, and then you don't have a chance to try again, like in on, on that [00:17:00] question. Where, when you are less than five points away, I really, I mean I've, I'm been analyzing people and there's scores for the last four years, and I can tell you right now people who are less than five points away they they doubt their. Ability to make decisions. I see it over and over again.
[00:17:22] There's a lot of doubt in their decision making process. There's a certain amount of, and you have to be honest with yourself. There's a certain amount of anxiety, there's a certain amount of Desperation. There's a certain amount of negative thinking, right? So I always talk about you can either, you can know a lot of stuff, but if your mindset, the way you think and the way you think about yourself, that's gonna affect your score, that really does, people will keep failing one or two points.
[00:17:51] So much of it is because you failed before, now you doubt yourself. And if you think you will fail, [00:18:00] You'll be right. Your mind is so powerful. If you think you are going to fail, you will be right because you will doubt yourself. You will doubt that information. You would doubt your ability to make critical decisions.
[00:18:17] Look at your score. Tell you. Ask yourself, do I keep failing by less than five point? And then ask yourself those questions. What have been, say, what have I been saying to myself? What am I saying to myself when I study? How am I studying all that good stuff? Now, if you are more than five, if you are more than 10 points, right?
[00:18:38] If your scores in your fifties and in your sixties there's some key information that you're not grasping, right? Did you actually study all of the topics? Cause if you're more than 10 points, it's a [00:19:00] lot more about what you actually know. And of course, again, these are the patterns that I'm seeing after talking to hundreds of therapists and seeing what what they tell me.
[00:19:16] If your score is in the fifties in the sixties, low sixties, what are your resources? What are your resources? Because I studied off of the yellow book or 15 years ago, some of y'all people still trying to study off of that. The in the anatomy isn't different, but there's a lot of other things that are different.
[00:19:45] And I think you need to know more up to date information. So I would ask, what are your resources that you're studying From what you know? So are are your resources up to date? [00:20:00] I also ask what. What are the resources that you're using? Some people are not using the right resources. I teach out of rehab of the hand.
[00:20:10] I think it's important. You might not be a reader and that's okay. And a lot of times people come into my programs because they are looking at ways to be more effective or more efficient, right? So if, part of my program, part of the exam prep program is I've, I go through a particular chapter, let's say, and I.
[00:20:31] I explain, I grab the key information, explain it, so then when they do go to read it or scan it they understand the concepts already and so it makes it easier to understand, easier to read. Does that make sense? So if you are doing this on your own and you're like, I don't wanna read the rehab of the hand, but you're, you keep getting, really low scores, right?
[00:20:58] You keep getting really low [00:21:00] scores. I would ask myself, am I studying off of the right resources? Am I setting off the right resources for what I need for what I need? Not other people. And that's the thing is like sometimes you look at other people and you're like, oh, they only studied off the Purple Book.
[00:21:17] I'll just study out the Purple book. But if you keep failing studying off the Purple Book, then what else can you do to essentially bridge that gap? Cuz you're not that person and that person is not you. Every person who comes in has different levels of ex years of experience and different clinical experience.
[00:21:42] I also say that you wanna take into account your clinical experience because some people are coming in, they're coming in hot, working in trauma, doctor own offices or whatever. And so a lot of times you're being told what to do versus given [00:22:00] the opportunity to really think through your cases in a particular way that the test actually.
[00:22:07] Test you on and requires you right to consider. So if you have failed if you say yes to giving yourself another chance one thing that I always say is give yourself a chance back to back. Give yourself a chance, back to back versus giving your, putting a lot of space and time in between and then trying again as if.
[00:22:32] It was back to back. Don't do that to yourself cuz it, you're setting yourself up for failure. Give yourself a chance to do it back to back. And then take that score and take a look at it and say how am I studying? What are the things that I'm missing? And usually you can see it in the score.
[00:22:46] Say, this is where I'm missing. And I like to chunk things out. Again, I've chunked out if you. Failed by very small amounts of points. I [00:23:00] believe that you need to understand or study the details in a certain way and in the certain areas where you are weak. And then fortify your mindset with positivity and how you can make better decisions for the exam.
[00:23:19] And then if you have scores that you know, the gap is greater than 10 scores, I would analyze the resources. How are you studying all the topics that you're studying? Because that's a big, that's a big enough gap that there's some information that's really truly missing. That you want to, you wanna make sure that you're covering cuz there's something there that you're not understanding, right?
[00:23:44] And part of it's like you have to be, you have to be okay looking at yourself, alright? You have to be okay looking at yourself and saying, what am I good at? What am I not good at? And then making sure that giving yourself a chance to address those things. And the more awareness you have of [00:24:00] how you are and who you are, I think that's the key thing to helping you to pass.
[00:24:06] All right, so I hope this helps. I feel like, so many of you are so close, so many of you're so close that you just need to execute well. And I do honestly believe, I don't think there's anyone who takes the exam who you know, is not a good therapist.
[00:24:24] Don't hold that against yourself. Don't think that the exam is, how do you call it? Don't internalize it to say I'm. Good or bad, it's just the fact that you, this is your score. Now how do I increase the score? So making it a little bit more, I guess objective versus subjective can really help you to give yourself a chance.
[00:24:45] And, if you decide yes, give yourself a chance. If you need my help, I'll include the links and you can always reach out to me and let me know what you need. All right? I hope this helps you and I'll see you. On the [00:25:00] next on the next call, on the next podcast or video. Again, my name is Huang Tron.
[00:25:05] I'm an occupational therapist and certified hand therapist, and I help occupational therapists advance and advance their career and have more choices. So let me know if you need any help. Thanks. Bye.
