Introduction: About the COMAT Examinations

The focus of chapter eight is psychiatry and psychiatric disorders. The primary care provider will deal with patients with psychiatric disorders all the time. Some of these are evaluated primarily by a psychiatrist, while others are managed by the primary care provider. The different disorders mentioned in this chapter include psychiatric and common psychological conditions commonly seen by primary care providers as part of their everyday practice.

Chapter nine in the course discusses the different neurological disorders seen in primary care medicine. Primary care providers will need to manage patients with a variety of neurological problems, many of which are chronic in nature. While many of these patients need to be followed by a neurologist, they also need be followed by their primary care provider. The different disorders discussed in this chapter include delirium, dementia, neuropathies, epilepsy, stroke, multiple sclerosis, and headaches.

Chapter ten is about the management of the different cardiovascular disorders. Cardiovascular diseases are often comanaged by primary care physicians, particularly when it comes to chronic diseases. Cardiovascular diseases include acute myocardial infarction, atherosclerosis, atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure, dyslipidemia, hypertension or hypotension, or peripheral vascular disease, which are covered in this chapter.

Chapter eleven in the course is about the diseases of the head and neck as well as the different respiratory diseases seen in the primary care setting. HEENT and respiratory diseases are things the primary care provider will often deal with. Many of these will be infectious in nature and will require short-term treatment. The management of otitis media, conjunctivitis, sore throat, and lung diseases are covered in this chapter.

The Clinical COMAT examinations actually comprise eight different areas of osteopathic medicine. Each examination covers a clinical area that you have as one of the rotations in osteopathic college. The tests are administered by one of many colleges of osteopathic medicine (COMs). The term COMAT stands for Comprehensive Osteopathic Medical Achievement Test. These are computer-based examinations and each test is 125 questions in length. You will be allowed exactly two hours and thirty minutes to take the examination.

If you take the COMAT examination more than one time, you will not be able to take the same test each time you take it; the individual COMs provide a different test each time but they will all be standardized and basically equivalent to one another. You cannot use any books, a cell phone, or another computerized device or tablet during the test. Each test question will be in a multiple-choice format with five possible choices per question.

Each clinical COMAT examination will be given after you have assimilated practical clinical knowledge about how to care for patients with various medical and osteopathic conditions. The examination you take is designed to see what you have learned in your clinical rotation.

According to the way the examinations are structured, the mean on the test will always be set to 100 points with a standard deviation of 10 points. The exam tests not only your clinical skills but the teaching abilities of your college. The college will use the information from the examination scores to help them improve their curriculum and testing standards. Each COM is allowed to give you a COMAT examination up to 10 times per year. Each test, a mentioned, will be different from the others but will be otherwise reliable and comparable to the other examinations.

The COMAT examination test questions are structured in two seamless dimensions. The first dimension relates specifically to patient presentation in the area of osteopathic medicine you study. The second dimension of the test places a focus on physician tasks,