You’ve been staring at your ABPTS case report, knowing you need to finish it…
…Your deadline brain says “September 30,”
…WHEN IN REALITY, you need to be done by September 19 if you want to submit stress-free.
This episode is your roadmap to getting it done without losing your mind.
I’m sharing the 3 mistakes PTs make every year that cost them weeks of frustration (and sometimes even their whole application cycle).
You’ll walk away knowing exactly how to:
- Pick the perfect patient case,
- Avoid the CARE statement slip-up that gets so many reports kicked back,
- And finish your case report with time to spare — and confidence to hit “submit.”
Save your seat today in Case Report Writing Workshop.
For more on case report corrections, listen to Ep. 359 – ABPTS Case Report Corrections Made Simple
Transcript
Dr. Elise K. Cantu (00:19)
Hey OncoPT and welcome back to this episode of the OncoPT podcast. Now real time, it is September 9th, which means that the September 30th final application deadline for the AVPTS oncology specialist certification exam is just around the corner. It is coming fast. You need to have that case report along with your entire application submitted by September 30th. But to do that safely, you cannot wait.
until September 30th to submit your case report. Number one, let’s start right off the bat here. You need to submit that application and case report on September 29th at the latest. And I say that because yes, well, the deadline is the 30th. The likelihood that Murphy’s law is going to kick in and your computer is going to crash. Your internet is going to go out. You’re going to have a catastrophic
brown out in your neighborhood, right? Whatever the situation, I would just count on something going wrong on September 30th when it comes to your application and case report. And so that way, if you give yourself at least a day of grace period, you have, if any of those things happen, if all of those things happen, you’ve at least got a little wiggle room to get yourself down to wherever the internet is working, wherever your device is actually working and has that beautiful case report that you’ve worked so hard on up and ready and ready to submit. Okay?
So first and foremost, never wait until the actual deadline to submit your case report. This is coming from someone who did, okay? Don’t do it. But even backing up further from that, if we say, okay, you need to have your case report and application submitted on the 29th, which is the day before the deadline, you need to be done with your case report even earlier than that. And I’m putting the final date as September 19th, and I’ll explain why shortly. But.
This is kind of the final call as of the day that this is being recorded and being posted. Today is your last call to actually buckle down, get serious on your case report if you are ever going to finish it by the time that the deadline rolls around. And I’m putting a huge asterisk on this. Like, yes, you can absolutely sit down and crank out a trash case report from now until then.
And you can probably even do that the night before. I do not challenge you to do that though, because that is a really, really bad idea. If you want to allow yourself the time to write your life’s best work, your career’s best work, the culmination of all the hard work and effort and passion that you put into patient care, into caring for people who have a cancer diagnosis, that starts now.
right, if you haven’t already started. You have to commit today. If you are going to have a shot at submitting your case report by the end of this month, right, by the deadline for this round of the application, or else lovingly, you need to wait until next year because this is not something, your case report is not something that you can ramshackle together and just hope for the best and not have to do any work on the backside to make sure that that case report is actually submitted.
So today we’re gonna talk about what is this timeline you need to be aware of? What are the three most common mistakes that I see and have been hearing from people who have been submitting their case report all summer and how to avoid these mistakes so that you can submit your case report on time and with confidence knowing that it is the best possible work that you could have possibly created for this momentous occasion.
Now, five years ago, exactly, I was in the process of completing my application, finishing up my case report, getting it submitted to my case report reviewer, implementing their feedback, and then ultimately getting it submitted on the absolute 11th hour, which as I mentioned previously, I do not recommend. So I thought I was done. I thought I was good to go. Only to be surprised on the backside,
of submitting my case report that I got an email from ABPTS that said, hey, we need you to do some corrections on your case report. Now I will link the previous episode I did all about case report corrections and how to do that process. So I’m not going to get into that. I will link it in the show notes for your reference. But it was basically the next two weeks since getting that email. We’re absolute pure panic.
And I don’t want that for you, my friend. It was stressful enough to write the case report, finish that application, get everything submitted, fingers crossed, hope for the best. And then to get that email on the backside, it was just like, it was, it was a lot of emotion. It was a lot of stress and I don’t want that for you. Okay. So when it comes down to.
kind of what’s at stake, right? What do you need to know? How do we need to stay on top of things from now, September 9th, until actually the deadline? Here’s the timeline that I would recommend. So yes, deadline September 30th. We recommend getting it in, like submitting on the 29th. But then back up even further, you need to have your case report done by the 19th of September. That’s 10 days away. Here’s why we say this here at the Onco PT. We recommend that
every one of our case report writing workshop students, when they finish their case report, they have to have a buffer of at least a week to get their case report sent over to their reviewers who they’ve identified ahead of time so that the reviewers have time enough in their busy schedule, right? Because they’re not robots. They don’t just sit at their computer waiting for your case report to arrive in their email inbox. They have lives.
They do other things in their own time other than just read your case report. So giving them the heads up of, hey, this is coming. I want you to be aware of it. I would really value your feedback. And also I need your feedback back by this date. Giving your case report reviewer at least a week to sit with, to obviously read your case report, reread your case report, maybe a couple times to really get some good feedback.
that is going to be helpful and constructive in you perfecting, or at least maybe not perfecting. Perfecting is not the right word here, because we’re not robots. We’re not perfect. We’re not seeking perfection. But to create the best possible version of your case report, that requires feedback, right? And implementing that feedback and having those outside perspectives and eyeballs, frankly, on your case report to strengthen it overall for submission. So,
Again, working backwards, September 30th, official deadline, September 29th, submit your stuff so that you are in by the deadline. September 19th, case report needs to be at the very latest, sent to your case report reviewers and then have a clear deadline on when they need to get it back to you so you can spruce it up a little bit before you actually hit submit, again, by the 29th at the absolute latest. If you miss this window, you are going to have to wait until next year to submit.
And that really sucks to hear. Like, ugh, all that work that you’ve maybe put in at this point, it’s not for waste. I would never, ever say that, right? But it really stinks to have gone through all of this work, this whole process, only to find out that your case report missed the deadline. ugh, ugh, it hurts my heart so much, okay? So that’s what the timeline is that you need to be working with moving forward.
from now until September 19th, which again, the time of this posting is 10 days away, you need to be cranking out your case report. And it needs to be done. And I would encourage you, if you haven’t already reached out to your case report reviewers, you need to do that now so that they know, here’s what’s expected, here’s the dates that we’re working with, like I’m gonna get it to you by the 19th, I need it back by the, I don’t know.
27th or whatever that date is that you choose that works out for the best of you so that the both of you, excuse me, so that you can get that feedback and then incorporate it, make those necessary corrections before you actually submit your case report in your application. So with that in mind, okay, now that we’ve emphasized the timeline, let’s focus in. Let’s remind ourselves of these top three mistakes that I see and I hear about from case report writers, both on the front end, but also on the back end.
I’ve had a couple people reach out and said, I’ve already heard back from ABPTS, I’ve already needed to make corrections. ⁓ So to avoid that process or maybe to lessen the stress of that experience, if that does indeed happen, because corrections are common, that is a normal part of case report writing, here’s what you need to avoid. Number one, picking the wrong patient case. And I know that is like a very, very early on mistake to make, right? It is like the one decision you make at the beginning other than,
yes, I’m going to apply for this exam. It is one of the earliest decisions that absolutely drive the rest of your case report experience, right? It’s what you write your case report on, is a whole patient case. And if you are not solid on knowing this is the patient case, that not only is it, you know, have a unique element to it, it’s interesting, it’s clinically relevant, it also showcases
my clinical decision-making, my specialist clinical decision-making in a way that really demonstrates to the board, yes, this is a future expert on oncology physical therapy. Yes, this person absolutely deserves a shot at becoming a board certified clinical specialist in oncologic physical therapy. So rewinding all the way back to the beginning of this process, you need to be extra solid on the patient case that you’re selecting.
It is okay. I have had on, excuse me, case report writing workshop students who have started with one case, started working through the workshop. And after going through the guided writing exercises and brainstorming activities that we do inside of case report writing workshop, they determined this is not the right case. This is not the right patient case for me. This is not going to showcase my clinical decision-making. You know, I don’t, and it,
could be that, yes, it showcases that, but it’s not enough from a literature perspective, right? That’s really going to help demonstrate like, here’s the clinical relevance to our field, here is how this case is contributing to advancing our profession. Sometimes there’s these really cool, awesome, rare cases that have limited clinical applicability for the widespread profession.
It’s not that it’s a bad case, but sometimes you have to work extra hard to really build the argument for like, this is a specialist work, right? This is really going to help improve our profession of oncology physical therapy because of X, Y, Z, whatever that is, right? So whatever that case is, why the writer determined this is not the right case for me, the sooner that you identify that, obviously the sooner that you can get started in a different…
with a different patient case that is ultimately again going to demonstrate you are a specialist. You implement specialist critical thinking clinical judgment skills ⁓ in your patient care and this is contributing, is promoting, is advancing our profession of oncology physical therapy forward. So what I would encourage you to do
before you start writing or before you start writing anymore, right, depending on where you’re at, check your patient against the ABPTS candidate guide and that check, kind of like checklist of case report stuff within the oncology addendum and make sure that this case truly meets the requirements and the expectations. This is going to save you obviously hours of time rewriting your case report.
and it’s going to help prevent the last minute panic that may set in the closer we get to that September 30th deadline. Now, number two, while this is number two, I think this is probably the number one most common mistake that I hear about in case report writing, which is forgetting the CARE statement. Now, quick recap. The CARE statement, the CARE stands for an acronym. I totally forget what it is right now, but basically it is
confirming that this case follows ethical practice guidelines for when it comes to actually writing a case report. for example, when you write a case report, you are not including that person’s identifiable information. Now that is a very obvious one, I hope for most of us, but there’s very specific parameters that the case report guidelines, right? This, this, ⁓
overseen body of how do we write good case reports? It’s not just physical therapy. It is like the medical community in general. Several years ago, they got together and says, how can we make sure that these case reports are ethical, right? They’re accurate. They actually depict what happened and we’re not embellishing things or leaving important things out, for example, making sure that they’re truthful. And again, that they help to promote the field of, in our case, oncology, physical therapy forward.
So in order to do that, there is literally a requirement in the ABPTS candidate guide, in the oncology section, that explicitly states you have to have a care statement. And all it is, is just an acknowledgement of the care guidelines for writing a case report and you have somehow integrated a citation that is pertinent to that into your writing.
And the AB PTS candidate guide, at least at last check, literally has citations there for you that you can just go to and then pull in and implement into your own case report. But you have to have this explicitly stated in your case report. I don’t know how much more clear to be other than like lovingly taking you by the shoulders and shaking you a little bit. This is a must.
If the readers at ABPTS don’t see this clearly immediately, basically as soon as they open your case report, it is an automatic dismissal, like not accepted. You have to make those corrections. It is a literal one shot. Like if you’re into video games,
or if you’re into any kind of games where the villain or the foe that you are facing has the potential to annihilate you with one fell swoop, this is it. This could be the make or break between your case report literally being accepted or not. Like forgetting everything else in your case report, this is the one shot of your case report. So please, for the love of God and whoever else you pray to, put
the dang care statement into your case report. Literally, I think you can put it in as early as your introduction. In fact, that might be one of the recommended places to put it, if that is there. You literally just have to have it there once and then you’re done with it. But don’t forget it because like I said, this is a one shot kill of your case report if you do not have that. ⁓
included. So please, please, please do that. I hear this every single year and I hear back from people because we emphasize this a lot in case report writing workshop. I hear back from a lot of people who didn’t take workshop and are now like, I now have to go back and do case report corrections because I forgot this. like, should have taken workshop guys. We talk about this all the time. All right. Mistake number three, the number three most common mistake that I see and to avoid when you are writing your case report,
is waiting too long to start writing. I know, I know. I know we’re in September talking about this. I know that you technically have, you’re working off of the timeline that we recommend here at the Onco PT. You have 10 days of writing left. It’s a little rushed, but my friend, you can get it done. I believe in you, okay? We’re here. This is the reality. This is the, as Dr. Kelly Martin likes to say, the clinical reality of what we’re working with.
you can still get your case report done and submitted by the deadline if you turn the blinders on and if you really buckle down and get super, super focused on this. It can be done, I believe in you, but remember, you need to start your case report and have it done by September 19th. If you are going to be able to get it sent to your reviewers who have the time and brain space,
to read it and provide you constructive feedback on how to improve your case report and then have time to implement that feedback into your case report. Read it over again, make sure that it is all good to go, and then actually submit that application with your case report by the deadline. And again, remember we do recommend by September 29th in case something goes catastrophically wrong, you’ve still got a little wiggle room. So quick recap, three mistakes to avoid.
wrong patient, not including the care checklist, waiting too long to get started. We’re here. It is now. It is not too late, but I’m going to say like tomorrow, it’s too late. If you haven’t decided, I am going to get serious. I’m going to buckle down. I’m going to finish this case report that I’ve started. I love with love. You need to wait until next year.
until you feel really, really good that you can dedicate the time and effort to this. It’s not that you can’t get it done by the deadline. It’s that it’s going to be pretty rushed unless you get serious today about it. Now, if you are in this camp of, do want to get serious. I want to be done with this case report. It has consumed enough of my mind, my mental energy, and my life this summer. My friend, you need case report writing workshop.
Case Report Writing Workshop is my signature program that is the step-by-step guide from a blank page to your finished first draft of your case report. You will get the templates, you will get feedback, you will get insight from other case report writers, and clear instructions on how to tackle every single aspect of your case report so you can finish by the deadline. And I’m not talking by the September 30th deadline. I’m talking if you get started today.
and get your booty in gear, you can get your case report finished by September 19th. yeah, yeah, that deadline timeline that we’re working with so that you can submit it to your viewers, get it back, implement their feedback, and then submit it and go along your merry way. You can join now at the Case Report Writing Workshop. So go to TheOncoPT.com/casereport to join. The clock is ticking.
And starting now is the only way to guarantee a smoother submission process, which I know you have in you, but you have to buckle down and get serious about it today. Avoiding these three mistakes and following this timeline is going to ensure that you are not scrambling at the absolute last minute. And you can finish your case report by the deadline, by implementing this timeline and avoiding these mistakes that we’ve talked about. You’ve got this, my friend. I believe in you. We believe in you here at the Onco PT.
And Case Report Writing Workshop is here to help you every step of the way until you hit submit on that case report that you’ve been working so, so hard on. Until next time, this is Elise with the Onco PT. And remember, you are exactly the physical therapist that your patients with cancer need. So let’s get to work.