Speaker 1: Hi, everybody, it's me again, if you haven't seen my first video about fellow status and how to obtain that, or what are the requirements prior to submitting for the exam, please go watch that first. But if you've already done that, and you're here, this video, we're going to explore my study habits, and how I studied for the exam and only managed to take it one time. Trust me, it's all about preparation, and making sure that you have the basic understanding of all the concepts of the examination. Now, before we further dive in, again, I do want to disclose that I'm not being sponsored by any of the products that I will be mentioning throughout this video. These are things that I've just utilized, and I want to share them with you. And it is up to you, if you want to purchase them, I do not get any monetary benefits from any of these companies or products. What did I do? So when I was trying to study at first, I wanted to just listen and not take notes at all. I thought just by listening, it'll happen through osmosis. Then I remembered I used to be an instructor for Hospital Corman in the Navy back in 2014 to 2018. And there's one thing we taught our students there. What type of learner are you? That's very important, because how I learn is probably not how you're going to learn. One thing that I recommend is the VARK survey. That's V-A-R-K. VARK stands for visual, auditory, read, write, and kinesthetic learner. Or maybe you're a combination of all four, just like myself. I was focusing so much on just being an auditory learner that I forgot that, wait, I'm all of the above. I have to watch videos. I have to listen. I have to read and write about it. And I also cannot just sitting down. And I'll share you techniques, how I managed to accommodate all of those. I'll post a link of a free website that we used to share to our students to identify what type of learner they are. It's very simple. For example, you're setting up a furniture. Do you prefer to look at instructions or read instructions? I know it's, I already know what it is. But if you're like me, I haven't been in school since 2015. So it's been about seven years since I've actually sat in an academic way. And honestly, that's how you're supposed to study for the bog is you need to treat it like it is a test in school. When I put myself in that mindset, then everything changed. So number one is what type of learner are you? VARK survey. Number two is actually finding out what is in the actual tests. Since I don't know this by memory, we're going to switch to a different mode to where I'm going to show you where you can find the outline yourself and figure out what you need to study. But as a preview, I'm just going to read this over before I switch to a different mode. The exam itself is about 230 questions. 30 are about like, I think they're called pilot questions. They're not really graded. And then there's 200. So there's 230 questions, and you have six hours to take it. On the previous video, I mentioned that I took a computerized test. So just imagine staring at a computer for about six hours, 230 questions. Now, what does that 230 questions entail? Now, there are 10 areas for the bog. Number one, healthcare, 14%. Management and leadership, 13%. Finance, 12%. Human resources, 11%. Quality and performance management, 10%. Business, 9%. Healthcare technology and information management, 9%. Laws and regulations, 8%. Professionalism and ethics, 8%. Governance and organizational structure, 6%. Now that you know what type of learner you are, what's going to be in the exam, what tools did I review just Google ACHE study bundle, it will show you exactly what I'm talking about. It's about $395 at the time of making this video, it is still about $395 I used to study. And again, I just want to disclose that I'm not getting any monetary benefits, whether you get these or not, it does not affect me at all in any financial way. So number one is the ACHE study bundle. If you go to the website and those textbooks, they're not all inclusive references to by the way, those are just the top references, the main ones that I would recommend that if you don't have the cash to purchase all of those, I highly recommend at least get the well managed healthcare organization book, and the flashcards or maybe ask your friends who already passed their fellow exam and see if they're willing to give it to you, rent it or sell it to you. But I personally purchased them brand new and I use them to study. Those are the first set of materials that I utilize. Second is I also paid for the 10 week virtual ACHE bog study forum. If you go to the website, you'll see that there is a live session and I'll show you their different times and what the speakers are going to teach. I did the one where it was recorded from a few years ago. So there were some items that were quite outdated when I was doing it. But what I like about this is it's hosted in a learning management system, the presentation itself, recorded and PowerPoint, then there was an exam quiz. And also it has text references that they are recommending for you to look over. Now, if you are in the Department of Defense, the third set of materials that I've utilized is hosted by the Navy Regent, they have an awesome program that I got to be part of, I was part of the committee. It's a 10 week version as well, but it's free for DOD personnel, active duty military, VA as well, Veterans Affairs. It is open to those individuals and we do exactly what ACHE does, except that we don't have the text references or the quizzes. However, what I liked about during my tenure just a couple months ago, we do have the practice exam, which is the fourth material that I utilize. The practice exam is 230 questions. It's a PDF and it has about 60 plus pages. I think I still have it here. Yep. So what I did was I printed it out and I answered it via paper first. Before I dove in, I wanted to see what was my baseline. I timed myself. What was my time at 50 at a hundred? Because if you are a test taker and you're not used to taking long exams, you want to train your brain for that. And the way you do that is taking a practice exam. Now I want to caution you. I actually got an email from the American College of Healthcare Executive Customer Service. They're saying that this exam is no longer in the website because it's outdated. I still use it. I'm not saying that I'm speaking for ACHE. I use it for the sole purpose of training my brain for answering 230 questions. I also wanted to use it because it helps me understand why I got the question wrong because there's also an answer key. I basically answered it and see why did I get this question wrong? Why is this the correct answer? And that helps your brain understand the format of the questions. This is why I like the practice exam. Again, it is not endorsed by the ACHE any longer, but it is still floating around in the interweb. So use it to your own peril or risk. I know the Navy Regent bog sessions that we did, we utilize that one. I also know other chapters that have utilized that. So I just want to caution you when you are studying this as well. The method that I used to study, I utilize RemNote. I'm a digital note taker. I don't like physically writing it down because one, I feel like my handwriting that I feel, I know for a fact my handwriting is like chicken scratch. So I do everything digitally. One of the platforms that I utilize is RemNote. You can use whatever note taking device, Apple Notes, Google Docs, Word document. The only reason why I like RemNote is because you can type your notes and at the same time, turn them into flashcards. So I don't have to worry about making flashcards from another platform to another platform. It does it all for me. Another thing that I would also recommend is when you are using RemNote, I would recommend that you go back to the outline that we just went over and use those keywords to study. So let me just show you. I think that'll be a lot easier. I just want to do a quick intro of how I utilize RemNote. I'm not going to go in depth with this one, but like I mentioned, I am a digital note taker. So what I did was I have a folder for my bog exam and I created essentially folders for each of the 10 areas, the 10 topics. So there's leadership, there's qualitative performance and ethics. Now, the reason why I love it so much is because you can create this outline format and you can create flashcards directly out of this. Let's just look at leadership real quick. I did with my RemNote is I've used the outline that you saw earlier and I picked out keywords that I need to study for the topic of leadership. So I need to know about implementation planning, contingency planning, organizational systems theory, and structuring. All this is in the ACHE bog outline. And then after that, based on the resources that I've read, where do I think those resources and topics will fit? So on here, as you can see, I have operating plan. And what I like about this is I can actually study the cards for this one. I'll post a link in the comment section if you want to learn the basics for RemNote. But if I click on here and I want to practice this, let's see, practice all cards for leadership and every definition that I just did, it will tell me there, okay, what is environmental assessment? I'll give me the definition. Oops, that was too fast. So let's see this one. Leadership benefit, team building techniques. What are the benefits of team-based care? I'm going to show my answer. And if I didn't know the answer, you could say, okay, I've forgotten about that. Or if you partially recalled it, or you recalled it with effort, or you recalled it immediately. And that's called space repetition. And this is why I like this platform. Again, I am not promoting RemNote. I'm not getting paid by RemNote. I just discovered it just by YouTubing stuff of how can I do digital note-taking and make flashcards all in one location. And a cool thing about this too, is you can upload your PDFs on here. And based on those resources that you have, if there's a specific thing that you wanted to emphasize on or highlight, you can do that and post it in your notes exactly. So let's just say I want to highlight this specific part right here. I mean, it's asking me, okay, do you want to add a highlight? Hit enter or command C, entered it. And then you can either copy it as a pin or you can quote it the full thing. So if I copy it, I can just control V and then there'll be a pin here. And I could just say something. This is about the question for output performance, right? Question output performance. Okay. And then when I'm reviewing it, I can easily click that link and it's going to go directly to that thing that I highlighted. So again, just the basics of RemNote. I really like this tool on here. By the way, these are resources that I got from ACHE and I am not the main author of their sources that you've seen here. Like I said, it's RemNote. I think it's, there is a fee if you wanted to use like the advanced features, like six months a month, but what's $6 a month for five months, if you just plan on utilizing it that way, because I loved it so much, I just basically committed to it. And that's how I study for all my stuff now that's school related or any big topics that I want to break down. I'll put in the description below how you can go in depth with the RemNote platform, but if this is not for you, there's nothing wrong with that one. So hopefully you found this part of the video useful. Thanks. Now, you know what the exam is, what materials I've utilized and how I studied. Last I want to leave you with, if you're like me and you're just like, oh, so antsy and you can't study for one hour, studies have shown that your brain can only handle so much information in a certain amount of periods. When I was studying, I moved around a lot. I couldn't sit for more than an hour. So I break it into chunks. So I use the time management technique called Pomodoro method. There's a lot of apps, or you could set up your own timer for free, and you just set your timer for 25 minutes, and then you study straight for 25 minutes. When the timer goes off and 25 minutes, then you take a five minute break. You don't do anything study related. I go to Facebook, Instagram. I just numb my mind from non-ACHE stuff. And I go to my happy world of not worrying about studying. I did that for about four rounds. Sometimes if I'm brave, I did it for five rounds. So if you compute that, I was studying for about two hours to two and a half hours every day. Try to not study on Sundays, just because I want to devote that to my family time. But there are also days that work I can only study for about an hour because it's been a long day at work. I started studying around February timeframe, and I didn't take the test till June. So that's about five months of preparation. And during that timeframe, the first two months actually was just devoted to the online sessions, learning from the instructors and taking my own notes. And then the next two months was just focused on formatting my notes and going in depth section by section in those 10 areas. And then the last month before my exam, I just focus on going over my notes and practicing the tests. That's what I did. It might work for you. It might not. Maybe you're the type of person that once you study, you need to take the exam right away because your fear is it will just fall off your brain. I'm the opposite. I need preparation so I can feel confident coming into the test. Whatever method you use, all I'm going to say is make sure you prepare. Hopefully this videos help you out. If you have any questions, please feel free to comment on the videos below. I'll try to respond to them as fast as I can. Good luck in your journey on becoming a fellow for the American College of Healthcare Executives. Bye now. you