BOARDS READY . . . USMLE BOARDS REVIEW PROGRAM

HANDS ON TRAINING FOR PHYSICALS, CHARTING, CASE PRESENTATIONS AND ASSESSMENTS


Mission Statement
The mission of Boards Ready is to empower
medical students with the confidence, knowledge
and skills to reach their maximum potential
on the USMLE Board exams so as to
qualify them for future residencies.

Tricia Derges is the CEO and Founder of Boards Ready.  In 2016 she founded, Lift Up Springfield Mission clinic in order to provide medical, dental and mental health services to the homeless, the Veterans, the poor and the uninusred.  In March of 2017, Tricia was awarded with the National Jefferson Award for SW Missouri and in June 2017 received the elite National Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Award from the Jefferson Foundation in Washington DC, which is only awarded to five individuals across the country each year.  This award is considered the Nobel Peace Prize for Community Service.  Joining the ranks of recipients that include Oprah WInfrey, Tom Brokaw and Mariano Rivera.

She is blessed to be a wife of 35 years and the mother of 8 children, including 2 older children that were adopted from Russia, and 26 grandchildren (current count).  She was the CEO and founder of a manufacturing company in Missouri for almost 20 years prior to her medical career.  She has received such awards as: Missouri Entrepreneur of the Year,  Top 20 Most Influential Women in SW Missouri and Manufacturer of the Year.  Her highest honor was a personal visit from President George Bush in 2004, to give recognition for the work her company had provided to the community.  She created home bound work programs for the needy of her community.  She also spent years working with troubled teens in the local Ozark high school to insure they earned their diplomas.

Tricia is very proud to have been a part of the Assistant Physicans Law in Missouri. In 2014 she provided testimony for the Assistant Physicians legislation and in 2017 wrote the wording for the Grandfather clause, a bill that was passed that corrected the eligibility time for application Assistant Physicians.  The Assistant Physician Law allowed Missouri to be the first state to make major headway in decreasing the severe shortage of physicians and getting qualified help for their underserved population. 

After raising her children, and a lifetime of business, she made the decision to go to medical school at the age of 52 in order to do more for those in need.  She graduated Summa Cum Laude of her medical class in Curacao, Netherland Antilles and did all of her clinical training at Cox Hospital in Springfield, MO., with whom Dr. Derges describes as some of the top physicians in the state of Missouri! She is eternally grateful to these great doctors that cared enough to make her training second to none!   Dr. Mike Galiindo, Dr. Anthony Richmond, Dr. William Moore, Dr. Michael Hanks, Dr. Jaime Jones, Dr. Edgar Galinanes and Dr. Rebecca Farinas (Jacksonville, FL). 

Throughout her medical school experience, her background as a business leader and mother allowed her to identify numerous areas that fell short of the proper training required for the USMLE Boards.  Because of these shortages she witnessed countless, talented students not only give up and quit, but lose thousands of dollars of their life savings and their parents life's savings.  As a parent she took this loss to heart.  She states, “It was as though I was watching my own kids lose their dreams!”

Tricia was determined to create a program and a book that helped fill the shortages and gaps that created these failures.  Her teaching method is designed to interactively include the student one on one in the learning process so that they will easily learn, understand and retain material with ease.  She feels that lecturing to students for hours and running through powerpoints is of no value.  Heavy discussion, questions and thinking outside of the box is implimented.  She uses parables to relate difficult topics to things students already do on a daily basis in their lives - so it makes understanding afst and easy.  She states:  "When students leave my class, they think like a doctor - this is why they do so well on their exams".  She disagrees with the common thinking of many medical school professors in that  “it was hard on me so it should
be hard on you”.  She believes that the majority of the material required for the USMLE Boards can be simplified so that it becomes visual and realistic to learn and understand, it does not have to be difficult.