Neurosurgical Boards

What would your approach be?

So let me say this, this would be a great oral boards question, because there really is no right answer. So let me explain a little bit. When you take your written board exam, right? When you, I guess the old days we'd sit there and color and squares on paper. Now you do things online. For that, you need questions where there's one clear answer. You know, you don't have time to debate or discuss.

It's pretty hard to write questions like that for a lot of clinical scenarios when, you know, there's kind of some evidence, some smart people who do one way, another do another way. You can't write a good written question that way. But for an oral exam, this is great because you have time to talk. So if I'm examining Mark, you know, I'll be showing him this case at ASICAM, but he just talked through it very well. He said, well, there are lots of ways to go. You know, you fail conservative treatment, you can do a one level or two level, that you do a bilateral laminectomy or just try to do one side and undercut.

And as long as you can give a thoughtful discussion of the pros and cons in each case, you know, that's sort of what people want to hear, you know, that you're a thoughtful surgeon trying to consider all the options. You're not just locked into one way of doing things.