Good Bye Providence

Finally on the way home from SIIM.


-yes I did take the CIIP exam.

-No I did not really study other than to read this book and drill friends in the biz.

the guy sitting next to me during the test had about 100 sticky notes in Huang's tome when I saw him in the lobby. The book had tattered edges and unlike mine, was clearly read through more than once.

Hope it helped him.


I am mixed on giving anything away as to test content other than to say that you really do need to know both the IT and Radiology side of the job. I know a few PACS Admins that would not do to well on the test and they've been in the business for years.


I will say this though...well, maybe I won't since everyone did have to sign a 2 page confidentiality form...

Anywho...everyone hit the watering hole after the big test - I couldn't tell if there were more nervous people pre or post test.

The pre-testers were starting to freak me out a bit. And some from that same group seemed to be a bit shell shocked after the test too...

Weird - this was a pilot test and some were treating the thing like their careers depended on the 'passing' the thing.

I went through the test in about an hour and spent another 40 minutes commenting on questions I thought were off. A couple of questions had multiple correct answers and those I talked to over drinks in the evening echoed my concerns. Most of the questions we commented on related to IT which makes a lot of sense.

Only a couple of tough ones in radiology and there were a few out of left field on the project management part.

I the test content outline is here and who knew you would have to know so much about education and characteristics of the adult learner - I probably have a good overview but I know I missed at least one or two in this section.

Has anyone out there put together a training program and related it to Blooms taxonomy? ... I thought not.

These are probably questions that will get thrown out but still, PACS training is not rocket science - I suppose if one were putting together a PACS Administrator program at the university level you would think about the 'types of learners' and the 'characteristics of the adult learner' but on the street most of us assume if you are a medical professional, Rad Tech, Nurse or Physician you probably able to learn how to view images on a PACS.

And the taxonomy is not without it's detractors - HERE is a good one that only takes 99 seconds to read. Here is another one on Bloom.

In reality I could care less about the validity of Bloom. I try not to put to much weight in a 50 year old theory that is being rapidly bypassed by more pragmatic and/or scientific cognitive methods.

Blah, Blah, Blah...

Lets just hope they leave a bit of the cognitive stuff in and not place to much emphasis on it - it's good to know but are we seriously going to use it?

At any rate, the best way to recover from an exam is to do what we did - head over to Hemingway's and order the 4lb lobster and wash it back with a couple of 15yr old Glenmorangie's



Good luck to all who took the exam and we'll see how we did in a month or so...