Smoked the PANRE

[doubledown10]

After preparing for and taking the PANRE recently I decided that I would throw in my two cents for those that are about the take the PANCE for the first time and for those taking the PANRE and don’t have any idea how to prepare. There is a lot of really good information on this forum, but unfortunately, and in like most forums and chats, some people are not very constructive with their posts or criticism. I would suggest that you read this and take it for what it’s worth. If it helps you, that’s great. If you are some kind of PA super genius and think you know everything there is to know about the process, skip it and keep you comments to yourself. Remember, just trying to help is all. And if you’re a student and you have never taken the PANCE, keep your limited experience with the profession and examination to a small amount. People come here for answers and not to read a bunch of garbage.

Hopefully your program has prepared you adequately to sit for the PANCE and be successful. No matter how well you think your program did at preparing you for the examination, you might not be as clever as you think you are. You should forget all the folk tales and horror stories that you have heard about the exam. The people that made it are not trying to fail you or get you to fail on your own. They want to test your fund of general knowledge. If you walk into the exam without preparing for that specific exam, you could fail.

There is going to be some natural and healthy anxiety about taking that test. Everybody has had it before. You might feel like you didn’t prepare for the test. I have reviewed just about every single test prep medium you can imagine and I will share with you my thoughts about what is effective and what isn’t worth your money. The test used to be just memorization of facts, but now they want you to do that and be able to do some critical thinking. Proper preparation will take you a long way with both.

Let me say that I have yet to come across a flash card system or product that is effective or worth the money. This is the worst culprit out there: http://www.flashcardsecrets.com/panre/

If you want to throw your money away, I’ll give you my routing number and just give it to me. Mo-media makes worthless products that if you rely on, will set you up for monumental failure. Not worth the paper that they are printed on so don’t get sucked in. If you want to use flashcards, which I do, make your own. They are effective to memorize things that you aren’t 100% sure on. But be careful, there comes a point when those cards become more overwhelming than helpful. You definitely don’t want to make a stack of cards 500 deep and then try to memorize them. DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM MORRISON MEDIA!!!!

Some people buy every single book, every review CD and every single resource they can get their hands on. What you need to do is find a few forms of education, and USE them. You might get to a point, like some of my colleagues, where you think that you have to study every single little book out there to pass and you simply will not have enough time for that. Research some books and CDs and whatever and stick with them. They are all basically the same information and they all will provide adequate resources.

Additionally, if you’re a student, now is the time to start buying prep books on amazon. Most of them are the same. They come with CDs and the book. Pick one that’s highly reviewed and pick it up. As a student, look at a chapter every month or so. It helps to prepare you for the kinds of questions that you might even see in your program.

The single greatest resource available to you is CME resources. Sometimes referenced as the Chicago course. Now I have used the Emory prep course as well. It comes on a DVD and you can download the info to your computer or ipod and listen to it in your car. It sounds like a fantastic idea, but there are some drawbacks. Some of the audio plain sucks. The instructors actually miss some of the required subjects from the NCCPA blueprint. And they don’t use a lot of buzzwords in their presentations. I drive an hour each way to work and I thought it would be great to have that resource. After a week I went back to listening to my satellite radio. The good thing about the Emory course is that it comes with a post test. Fill it out and mail it back to them and they will send you a certificate that’s good for some CAT I CME.

CME resources on the other hand, it’s fantastic. They put on a fantastic lecture series. It is grueling and intense. You’re looking at some long days. If you haven’t been, you need to go before you take the PANCE. At the end of each day they give you a test that should take you two hours to finish. They grade them the next day and on Friday they give you a grade report that tells you pretty much how well you should do on the PANCE. My score the first time around was within ten points so it’s pretty accurate. The first time that I attended I was almost done with school and my opinion is that you are never smarter than you are the day after you leave school. After that, you begin to “leak” knowledge. So schedule yourself for CME resources as soon as you can. They are all over the place. And the best part of it is that they painstakingly follow the NCCPA blueprint and give you a binder filled with the lectures from each block. It’s an amazing reference. For example, a friend of mine who took the PANRE recently hadn’t attended a CME Resources class in six years, but he studied his old binder and had no trouble. I really cannot say enough good things about that program. Just google cme resources and find the one that’s closest to you. And for those that already have the C, go to it anyway. I think it’s around 40 CME. If you’re a specialty guy like I am, the review will help you immensely.

Next reference is Physician Assistant Board Review: Expert Consult - Online and Print (Expert Consult Title: Online + Print) [Paperback] by James Van Rhee. Everybody has a favorite book and will tell you why they thought that book was the best. And everybody will ***** and moan about a book needing reviews and revisions and having mistakes and blah, blah, blah. If you are short on time, I mean two weeks away from testing and you feel lost and don’t know where to go to study, just buy the latest edition of this book. You can read through the entire thing in about a day. And I mean read it cover to cover in a day. So make some sacrifices at home and read through it seven or eight times, take some notes and go pass your test. People will state that the knowledge is too basic, I disagree. I have another colleague who is specializing in pathology. This dude wouldn’t know a heart murmur from a seizure. In one week of study with this particular book (the older version) he was out of the PANRE in 2 hours and not only did he pass, he passed well. It’s a great reference. I think it’s better than the AAPA books and also better than the Appleton and Lange books that people have said are the gold standard. Go to Amazon and buy this book. Use it. Don’t like it or think it sucks, sell it on Amazon.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Physician-Assistant-Board-Review-Consult/dp/1437700004/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292738208&sr=8-1#_

 

 

I will use it on my next PANRE

 

The last reference that I think is invaluable is the latest edition of datachem, PA-C prep. I used this when I was student and this is the only testing program I used before the PANRE I just took. Tons of questions, cover every topic, and if you do well on the self tests, you will do well in the PANRE. It’s adequate for test prep for the PANCE as well. And if you don’t pass after suing their product, they will give you your money back.

 

This is how I prepared for the last PANRE I took, and I suspect that this will work well for the PANCE.

 

I went to the CME resources lecture. I sat up front, got a good seat (those things are packed and usually fill up fast) and I really paid attention. I really took notes and listened to these lecturers. When the lectures were over for that day, I went back to my room, took the self test and then went out and got something to eat. I went back to the hotel, opened the binder and reviewed that days lectures and read ahead for the upcoming day. This might seem like it’s intense and way too much work, but keep in mind, it’s only one week. If you study really hard that one week, you can probably test out as soon as possible. If you don’t want to do that, you can do what I did.

 

I took my CME resources binder and I read it again cover to cover. I made flashcards of the buzzwords and things that I didn’t know by heart. Then I reviewed the exams that they gave us again. I put that binder away after that. Then I pulled out the green book by Van Rhee and read it cover to cover and highlighted the things that I didn’t know by heart. I spent a few hours going through the DataChem PA-C Prep disc and revisited things that I wasn’t 100% comfortable with. I reviewed my flashcards and notes. Finally, I went back through, cover to cover, the green book by Van Rhee and was ready to go. I didn’t kill myself studying. I didn’t lose sleep over the exam. I started preparing a few weeks in advance. But I do work in emergency medicine and I took the generalist PANRE. If you work in primary care or EM, you should be fine as you see enough common primary care complaints.

 

You can take the practice tests on the NCCPA website. They offer two for the PANRE and one for the PANCE. But don’t let this fool you. It can do so in several ways. One is that if there is only two ID questions on that version of the practice test and you miss one, the results will make you think you’re an ID idiot. On the other hand, if you get both of those questions correct, you might think that you’re a super genius and stop studying those subjects. For example, I totally bombed heme and EENT on both practice tests, but on my latest PANRE I got 100% of the questions right in both of those categories. Just be aware.

 

There are no curveballs. Just prep a little before and you will be fine. Remember, this is my experience and yours might be different, but the methods that I used, they are pretty solid and they worked like a champ. When I left the testing center I had no doubts at all that I had passed.

 

 

[lzypanda]

Thanks for your words of wisdom ;)

I just wanted to add real quick too...

I purchased one of the practice exams from the NCCPA website ($35) - not very helpful. It says that they will not give you answers/explanations, but I thought it would at least let me review the exam questions over so that I could look up stuff I thought was questionable. And nope, you don't get anything. I wouldn't recommend it b/c it really didn't help me at all. It has a short tutorial in the beginning that helps familiarize you with their screen layout, but this is also available for free download for those who are interested.

[doubledown10]

LZYPANDA, yeah, the NCCPA keeps a tight grip on stuff like that. Most of those questions were previously in active test rotation. I find it equally frustrating that after you take the PANRE, you don't get to know what questions that you got wrong. It's crap, but it's what we have now.

[lzypanda]

haha good to know.. i like to learn from my mistakes, but i guess with them it's not really an option! I purchased the kaplan Qbank this afternoon too.. and took a short exam - pretty helpful ;) great explanations and breakdown - it even tells you how many you changed from correct to incorrect or vice versa.

[doubledown10]

kaplan is a good bank. Exam master is pretty good as well. Although some of them are like "What the heck is that"

[lzypanda]

yeah... i have that reaction lots of times.. and with kaplan i know they are trying to pull a fast one on me so I end up choosing the most bizzare answer choice - and it ends up being right hahaha i dunno sometimes i feel like it's a 6th sense guessing game. what's exam master like? does the datachem cd tell you how many questions it comes with?

[doubledown10]

Datachem comes with over 1200 questions. Shoot me a personal email on here and we can discuss.

[Tayce]

Do you know what the CME Resources online prep costs? I was unable to navigate their page due to my computer rebelling. :)

[Iain1028]

Morrison Media is the devil! They are an evil company.

 

Personally, I am going to study for the PANRE the exact same way I studied for the PANCE using a 30 day plan. Will use the same two books and Data Chem.

[marilynpac]

Where do you purchase Datachem at, I can't find it anywhere...

[d2305]

http://www.certistep.com/shop/10browse.asp that took 10 sec.

[marilynpac]

thanks for the info...

[doubledown10]

Shoot me a personal message and we can discuss

[tshamp]

can't thank you enough for the great outline of study prep above. seriously, you rock. If you lived in minneapolis I would buy you a beer.

[lucypa]

thanks for the info, i have been out of practice for 3 years and specialized in neuropsych so i need to start all over! i really don't feel like i know anything anymore. I need a basic review that goes over everything you need to know to pass the test. Do any of the resources you listed offer this?

[marilynpac]

cme resources does an excellent job of going over EVERYTHING all over again. A little pricey, but worth it....

[lucypa]

ok, thanks so much for getting back to me, i will give it a shot

[anitah]

Awesome! Thanks so much for taking the time to share.

[doubledown10]

Not a problem. I wish everybody the same level of success that I've had using the tools I listed in my original posting.

[tshamp]

again I had to say thank you as I have followed your guide here...I feel confident and feel like I owe you a shout out. Trish

[Mari]

Thanks for the excellent info on PANRE prep. I have been a PA for 25 years. I took the Pathway 2, take home tests the last 2 recerts. In September, 2011, I took the PANRE @ test center & FAILED. Now, I realize that I had not prepared enough. I have spent more than half of my career in OB-GYN & Pediatrices. For the past 7 years, I have been in Primary Care, yet the bulk of my pts are Peds & Women's Health Care. Fortunately, I have about 1/4 of pts that would be considered Primary Care. I studied about 2 months (approximately 75 hours) using an old version of Lange Current Med Dx & Tx, Harvey's, and a cardiology/ EKG interpretation text.

Now I am rescheduled to retake PANRE on Dec 17, 2011. This time I MUST pass or lose my C on Dec 31. I have a new Lange Current Med Dx & Tx 2012, Comprehensive Review for the Certification & Recertification Examinations for PA's (just ordered) & just started Medex Enterprises labor intensive board review virtual class room on line.

My question now is reguarding Board Review course. It appears the Chicago one is the best from what I have researched so far. I als see on from Barry in Miami, what is your opinion on it? When should I take the review course in relation to the PANRE??? I am thinking of doing all the studying, on line stuff, etc & then do the board review Dec 5-9...PANRE will be Dec 17. Is that a good idea? Or would it be better to take the board review course in Nov ( a bit over 1 month before test?) Then have more time to study their handouts & deficient areas. I appreciate your feedback & suggestions. Thank you.

[PennPA4]

hey

I am also interested in knowing if Barry course is worth it. I heard Chicago course is lots of overload. I was thinking of taking CME Course. I am planning on Exam Master, Datachem and standard- Lange, Vanree and my study guide from previous exam. I am afraid of failing, especially because it will be my first PANRE especially after reading some of comments here of new PANRE.

[Mari]

I am registered for the Chicago course Dec 5-9. Meanwhile I am studying & using medex Enterprises which it labor instensive but makes you look everything up to be certain you know the stuff you think you know. Plus, review the stuff you knew when you graduated, but didn't use. I decided to go with Chicago over Barry as it has already been approved for 41 hr of Cat 1 CME & it has good reviews. It cost twice as much & I hope that it is twice as good.

[LHRLAX]

I took the PANRE friday and found out my score on monday morning

 

IF you have time do the emory videos 3 times on the subject your weak at

also the questions on the DVD and also the exam master 3 times and review all the choices and answers