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Newly accepted PA student, what to pre-study?


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Hello,

 

I am a newly accepted PA student for one of CA's fine schools! I wanted to know what some PA students or PAs currently studied prior to school, or wish they had studied (haha). I have already looked over anatomy/physiology and medical terminology. I have free time so I want to use it wisely. THANK YOU! 

 

 

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I am in the same boat. You may want to contact the students in the program you are accepted to and ask what their first big exam was on. I know for my program it's dermatology, so I am spending time on that. I have the latest edition of Harrison's Principals of Internal Medicine so I am using the same text that my program uses.

 

I know many will say to enjoy your free time and take a vacation, which I agree with, but there's nothing wrong with spending a few hours to prep.

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Med term and A&P are two excellent choices.  The rest often depends on your program emphasis, weaknesses you want to shore up (e.g., only took one psych course years ago), or strengths you want to be sure to bring to the school with your 'A' game (e.g., working Paramedic for years, make sure you have even the odd EKG stuff down cold).  There are a thousand answers, depending on what you want to accomplish.

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I am in the same boat. You may want to contact the students in the program you are accepted to and ask what their first big exam was on. I know for my program it's dermatology, so I am spending time on that. I have the latest edition of Harrison's Principals of Internal Medicine so I am using the same text that my program uses.

 

I know many will say to enjoy your free time and take a vacation, which I agree with, but there's nothing wrong with spending a few hours to prep.

Looks good ... Thanks for the suggestion Mr E  QYvsQ4t.gif

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Relax.  Do something fun that you might not have time to do soon.  Make it memorable.  

 

Collect books you may want to use... ones that have listings of "most common..." or gives a quick summary of diseases based on symptoms, etc.  Pocket references, "Boards and Wards", etc.  

 

Organize yourself.  Figure out how you are going to carry tons of books to class when you need to... or if you will manage with laptop alone most of the time.  Look up "mobile office" bag on google.

 

Get lots of sleep.  Figure out how/when you sleep best and when you study best.... late hours, early hours?  Does coffee help you, or does it just leave you an awake zombie?

 

Get 2-3 PANCE review books.. you will get an idea of what kinds of questions you will have in PA school and get a feel for them.  Some review books are different than others, so pick up 2-3 to get a better view.

 

Meet the current year seniors of your PA school..ask them for tips.

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Read "The House of God" by S. Shem and that will put it all in perspective (old book, but around).  BTW, Shem is the pen name.  Author was actually a Harvard med school student/grad and the characters are confluences of fellow students (so said a local GI doc who was in his med school class).  I swear that I've worked for "Jo".

^ This reminds me of a game. Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (which) is a parlor game based on the "six degrees of separation" concept, which posits that any two people on Earth are six or fewer acquaintance links apart. That idea eventually morphed into this parlor game, wherein movie buffs challenge each other to find the shortest path between an arbitrary actor and prolific Hollywood character actor Kevin Bacon. It rests on the assumption that any individual involved in the Hollywood, California, film industry can be linked through his or her film roles to Kevin Bacon within six steps. The game requires a group of players to try to connect any such individual to Kevin Bacon or JO as quickly as possible and in as few links as possible. It can also be described as a trivia game based on the concept of the small world phenomenon. In 2007, Bacon started a charitable organization named SixDegrees.org. Source: wikipedia - Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon WE all should play sometime and see how close WE can get to Kevin or Jo PLxA0Jp.gifyelvbEQ.gif

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