Practice Qs for PANCE

[gtgcatisonfire]

Was just wondering which practice Qs are the most similar to the PANCE (in terms of style & difficulty)??

 

Or, if you could recommend only one, which one would you do: PAeasy, PANCE masters, Kaplan Q bank, or any others? Thanks!

[rev ronin]

I would emphatically DIS-recommend PA Easy: Please do not give them any money or business. I've used them throughout 2012, up until my final board preparation last week, as they were a school-provided resource. Throughout 2012, I have sent in about 50 corrections using their "report this question" tool. In NO CASE were any of my issues answered or corrected.

 

In some cases, the answers were questionable--one that springs to mind was which was the next study to order in a symptomatic ED patient presenting with s/sx of valvular heart disease on auscultation. Both CXR and TTE were options, and they had selected TTE as the proper next test... but in actual clinical practice, I know of no ED where the TTE would ever happen before the CXR. Those, I could see NOT changing, but my argument was that the distractors should not discriminate based on the student's ability to correctly guess whether the "next test" meant chronologically in a standard order set, or the next test which would be done in an order that didn't follow any protocols (or care about relative cost or time to execute the test).

 

In most cases, however, the questions were simply miscoded. The explanation text would say "The correct answer is C, respiratory alkalosis", when the actual answer C would say "respiratory acidosis", and answer A would be "respiratory alkalosis".

 

Throughout the explanatory text, words were routinely run together without spaces. On at least one of the questions, the question had embedded answer letters at the beginning of each question, resulting in doubled-up text like "A: A. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma" Cosmetic issues, to be sure, but ones that indicated the overall low level of commitment to quality within the project.

 

But the real zinger is when, after answering each and every one of their 1203 PA review questions over the course of several months, I went back and took repeated examinations on only the questions I had answered incorrectly, NOT ONE of my feedback items--to include straightforward, obvious miscoding--had been addressed. You might think "Gee, might you be overreacting? Maybe the feedback didn't actually work properly and they never saw your complaint?" All I have is the informal word of our academic coordinator, who reported to several of us that PA Easy staff had told her that my program's students were very prolific in sending in corrections. At the local board review session the week after graduation, several of my classmates and I compared notes on online question banks and no less than FOUR separate students had reported a particular PA Easy question as blatantly wrong.

 

Overall, the error rate in PA Easy questions that I detected was about 3-5%, and I found no evidence of any attempt to contact me or correct their question bank on the basis of any of my feedback. As a consumer, I don't expect perfection. But when I volunteer my time to help you improve your product and you don't even bother with it, it's really an insult not just to me and my peers, but to your future customers. PA Easy? I wouldn't recommend using it even if it were free.

[bgdog]

Good to know, thanks Rev, duly noted.

[xcman1539]

PANCE MASTER IS AWESOME! It gives you feedback on the areas you need to improve. You can take timed test, or tutor mode. Worth the 55 bucks =)