Customer Reviews

Preparing For The Occupational Therapy National Board Exam: 45 Days And Counting (DiZazzo-Miller, Preparing for the Occupational Therapy National Board Exam)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I purchased this book to assist with guiding my preparation to write the NBCOT exam. As a foreign (Canadian) trained OT, I felt that using a review book would help fill in some of the gaps that may have been present as a result of not being educated from within the American healthcare system.

The book is divided into chapters, with each chapter representing a different practice area. Each chapter contains a summary of important information, as well as worksheets to fill out or case study questions to guide your studying. I found this outline structure helpful in allowing me to gloss over what I already knew, while focusing in more specifically on areas I knew were deficits. It also provided references to where the information could be found in common, up to date textbooks. Suggestions are given as to the amount of time to spend on each topic - generally 1 to 2 days per chapter. Some chapters required more study, while others required less.

The book also comes with a CD of practice multiple-choice questions, which can be structured as mini-exams in almost any way you want - subject matter, domain area, or just a general test. While I only made limited use of the exam CD, I did find it helpful in determining my ability to recall information when it was being presented back to me.

All in all, I would say the book does what it claims to do - helps to structure the study process for the exam. The authors provide tips and suggestions on how to approach exam preparation, as well as content summaries for the major practice areas. If you are looking for a book that will give you all of the information you'll need, this is not it. But, if you're looking for a resource to help guide you in figuring out what to know, this may do the trick for you... it worked for me!

This CD gives you both customized quizzes and performance results that tell you what you want to know. Mac users beware; the software will give you test questions by chapter in an Html format but will not provide you with the tweaked out bells and whistles provided for the PC version that I enjoyed. I tried both- the Mac version doesn't provide you with the domain specific or customized test result features like the PC version does. The read me files or instructions do not explicitly tell you about the absence of these features either. Only after borrowing a friends PC did I see the obvious advantages of using the PC for this CD. Another plus about this CD-ROM is that it the content is not so hard as to discourage you like other learning aides (ie. TherapyEd review tests). Although I did find the TherapyEd book helpful to build my knowledge base for taking the NBCOT (I did not pass the first time), I learned that many details the T-ed book provided were too specific. The NBCOT makes you wait 45 days to take it again. If you're in that position, I'd recommend this book due to the 45 day structure, the specialized feedback, and the encouraging content.

Overall, I found this book very helpful and used it as my main study guide. Seemed to give the right amount of detail, which the other books did not (the TherapyEd book especially had too much detail and the exams are much harder than the actual exam). I was somewhat frustrated with several chapters that were purely outlines as it seems to me a review book should contain the actual information, not tell me what I need to look up. However, the price is reasonable and certainly a lot better than the TherapyEd book, so overall a good study guide.

This book is more of an outline than a book. It's outdated a little bit. And several chapters just a diagnoses and tell you to look up symptoms, precautions, and treatments. I bought the TherapyEd book and it's a much better book. But there are some things in this book that aren't in the TherapyEd book and a lot of things in the TherapyEd book that aren't in this book. I'm using the books combined with each other. But if you buy only book book, I recommend TherapyEd. My friends from earlier classes used just the TherapyEd book and all of them passed.

This book lays out everything you need to know in outline format, and the Manual that goes with it tells you how the information will be presented on the test.

This book is not really what I was expecting. What to study for is pretty good, but it gives no other information. I was looking for more information and hoping for more of a question-answer kind of book.