PA Easy

[WanderlustPA]

Does anyone know if the questions on PA Easy are comparable to PANCE questions? I've heard from some PA's that they are actually harder. I'm more concerned with the relevance, however.

[rev ronin]

The problem with PA Easy is that it had, at the time I used it for PANCE prep 4 years ago, about a 3% error rate.  That is, their answers were objectively and demonstrably wrong about 1 in 30 times.  My classmates and I filed multiple error reports, and we know they read them because they commented about it to our program director, who relayed it to us: "they say you guys fill out more feedback than anyone else ever has".  We compared notes--multiple classmates had independently found the same error in their question bank.  Fast forward several months, and the same questions still had the exact same errors when I went back to try it again.

 

Nothing was ever fixed or acknowledged.  I still use the same email address from which I filed all those error reports.  All they have to do to get me to stop badmouthing their product is answer their feedback.

 

I do not recommend anyone use PA Easy for ANYTHING AT ALL, even if it's given to you for free.  It's simply not a trustworthy resource, because with the abysmal quality control they had, even the 95+% that didn't have obvious errors were still not reliable.

Frankly, since this is the first time anyone has asked this question on this site in a while, I was hoping they had gone out of business.  No one has any business selling board review questions with wrong answers.

[taotaox1]

I had the exact same experience and personally feel the error rate was higher than 1 in 30. Get somthing else.

 

[Timon]

Not a fan of PA Easy for the same reasons mentioned by Rev. Same thing where their explainions even contradicted their answer correct answer which was incorrect to begin with.

 

Rosh Review is a great question bank to start with.

 

My next favorite has been PANCE master.

[WanderlustPA]

Wow... I haven't noticed any errors. So either they've fixed them, or I'm learning incorrect information! It seems that most of the questions/answers come from Current, and they always reference the page numbers. I haven't double checked any of them, but maybe I should.

[rev ronin]

If Timon is having the same problems now as an S2 that I had in 2011-12, then I would guess the problems aren't solved.

[gbrothers98]

Program I work with has it available for free.

I used it the other day, started doing questions as a review. Will keep an eye on it and see what I think about errors.

I like the fact can set up short exams in specific areas. 

Also have access to Exam Master. Havent test driven that yet, on the agenda.

Strategy that I think works better than doing question banks is actually making your own questions. Not something that is easy but if stick with it as a study tool, start to view everything as what is important vs what is trivia.

To answer the OP as to how compares to PANCE, might be a question that a recent PANCE taker could answer that used PA Easy in depth. But since exam changes on regular basis with questions being replaced, one perception could turn out to be based on old information.

I think difficult to state one bank better than others. For instance, Rosh Review mentioned. I took it for a test run at AAPA conference. Liked it but at same time thought a question I viewed had a just as likely correct answer choice compared to the correct choice. So I doubt will find a perfect test bank out there.

Also, if you are knowledgeable about topic enough that you can note that an answer marked as correct is actually wrong, to a certain extent have just proven that your retrieval practice is working because you are able to pick up errors.

Other strategy is to use EORE feedback to direct study. These are exams that try real hard to mimic PANCE. So in the end can use feedback to direct effort towards where knowledge base deficit is rather than sticking with topics comfortable with. This is also a time saver because work on weaknesses.

I discuss with students that what I think is important is to stick with one thing, such as an exam bank and use it to it's full extent rather than bouncing around from one to another. Distraction when trying to move summative knowledge to long term memory will increase the extraneous cognitive load and lead to frustration and a sense of increased workload.

Good luck.

GB PA-C