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ABOG Oral Boards · Case List

Building & Defending Your ABOG Case List

The personal case list is the half of the ABOG oral no question bank can prepare you for. You defend your own real patients. Here’s how to build a list you can defend with confidence, and how to rehearse it.

In short: your ABOG case list is a de-identified record of cases you personally managed, collected over a defined window and submitted before the oral. In the exam, examiners choose from it and question you on your actual decisions, so the goal isn’t just to assemble the list, it’s to be ready to defend every case on it.

What the case list is

Roughly half of the ABOG oral is built from a list of cases you collected and de-identified during the required window before the exam. It spans the content areas (obstetrics, gynecology, and office practice) and it becomes the examiner’s script: they pick cases from it and ask you to walk through your reasoning, your management, and your outcomes. You are defending decisions you actually made, not a textbook scenario.

The exact collection window, categories, and formatting are set by ABOG and can change year to year. Confirm the current requirements on ABOG’s official materials before you build your list.

How to build a strong list

  1. 01Collect early, de-identified only. Start logging cases well before the deadline, and strip every identifier as you go. The list must contain no PHI.
  2. 02Cover the blueprint. Spread your cases across obstetrics, gynecology, and office practice rather than over-concentrating where your rotation happened to be heavy.
  3. 03Choose cases with a teaching point, one you can defend. Complications and judgment calls make for richer exams, but only include a case if you can explain and justify what you did.
  4. 04Organize by content area, and know the “so what” of each. For every case, be able to state the one-line teaching point and the key decisions in a sentence.
  5. 05Flag your uncomfortable cases. The cases you’d rather not be asked about are exactly the ones to rehearse most.

How examiners probe your cases

Examiners don’t want a recap. They want your reasoning. Expect them to ask why you chose what you did, to change the variables (“what if she were older, unstable, or declined?”), to propose alternatives, and to keep pushing until they understand how you think. They’re assessing judgment and communication, not memory. A case you managed well can still go badly if you can’t defend it out loud.

How to prepare to defend every case

  1. 01Write the teaching point + your key decisions for each case, in one or two lines.
  2. 02Anticipate the “why” and the “what if.” For each decision, know your justification and how you’d adapt if the situation changed.
  3. 03Rehearse out loud. Say your defense in full sentences. Reading your notes silently is not the same skill.
  4. 04Drill your weakest cases repeatedly until defending them feels automatic.
  5. 05Practice under questioning. Have someone, or an AI examiner, pick a random case and press you on it, cold.

Rehearse your own cases, free

OBMOB reads your de-identified case list, organizes it by content area, and examines you on the cases you’ll actually defend, then scores how you reasoned. It’s the one kind of practice a question bank can’t give you.

Practice on your cases free →

Common mistakes

  • Over-concentrating the list in one content area or one kind of case.
  • Including cases you can’t defend: a weak justification invites harder questions.
  • Memorizing instead of rehearsing aloud: the oral is a speaking skill.
  • Ignoring the “what if” variations examiners use to test your reasoning.
  • Never practicing under real questioning before exam day.

Keep going

The Complete Guide to the ABOG Oral Exam OB/GYN Mock Orals: How to Practice Frequently asked questions