It might be asking for which medication is CONTRAINDICATED. It might be asking for the GOLD STANDARD diagnostic tool. Rarely is the question asking for the actual diagnosis (that would be way too easy)! It might be asking you for the INITIAL STEP in management. With limited time, it is critical to understand what the question is actually asking you. (By the way, these are my best exam-taking strategies for any PA school exam, not just the PACKRAT!) Read the END of the question first. It’s important to know your strengths (and more importantly) your weaknesses so that you can improve before the real deal, make or break, board exam. Of course, the PACKRAT is typically not taken for a grade or anything other than your own personal knowledge but I like to take practice exams as if they were the real thing. Now that you know what to expect, let’s talk about strategies for taking the exam. *The time you have to take your exam is adjustable between 4 and 6 hours depending on your proctor. The breakdown of topics is similar to the PANCE with cardio and pulmo being the “heavy hitters.” I’ll list the actual percentages of each topic below. There is a list of normal lab value reference ranges to the side that you can open at any time. That math breaks down to roughly 1 minute and a few seconds per question. It is a totally computerized exam consisting of 225 multiple choice questions and you have 4 hours* to take it with no built-in breaks. Also, after posting about PACKRAT day on my Instagram story, I received multiple questions about it so I thought it would make for a good blog article!įirst let’s talk about the basic set-up of the exam. There are endless resources and blog articles regarding the PANCE but not much about the PACKRAT. Every program is a little different but at UAB, we take it at the end of didactic year and again at the end of clinical year before taking the boards.īefore taking the exam, I did some googling for information about it but did not find much. When I walked out of the testing center on the day of my PANCE, I felt that the education my classmates and I received during our didactic and clinical years, as well the additional PANCE specific training we received at Yale had served me well for the PANCE.My classmates and I are nearing the end of didactic year (WOOHOO) and recently took the PACKRAT exam which is a “practice PANCE” that PA students can take to predict how they will perform when taking the boards. Using them to study helped tremendously in not only my knowledge base but also in my ability to go through the questions in a timely manner. Although I found these questions extremely challenging, and at times even discouraging, these questions were the most similar to the type of questions I experienced on my PANCE exam. The questions in the question bank were typically long and detailed and required an in-depth understanding of the subjects being tested. The PowerPoints were brief enough to listen to in their entirety before taking the exam and really hit on the key points of each disease state without focusing too much on unnecessary details. Overall, I found the Kaplan material to be one of the most valuable study aids that I used when preparing for the PANCE. We were also given access to an online Kaplan PANCE Prep course, which contained audio-recorded condensed PowerPoints on each subject tested in the PANCE in addition to a large question bank with detailed answer explanations. How we performed on the cumulative exams in combination with our score on the second PACKRAT exam gave us a fairly solid idea of whether or not we would pass the PANCE at that moment in time. ![]() ![]() These tests included a multiple-choice exam, a written exam, and a standardized patient exam. Along with the PACKRAT, we also took a series of cumulative tests prior to graduation. While the first PACKRAT was an exercise that introduced us to a cumulative medical subject test, the second PACKRAT gave us an excellent idea of the areas we needed to focus on before taking the PANCE. We were given the chance to take the PACKRAT, or Physician Assistant Clinical Knowledge Rating Assessment Tool, in both the second and third year of school. In addition to the general medical knowledge we gained during our didactic and clinical years, Yale also provided additional resources to help us prepare specifically for the PANCE. Preparing for and taking the Physician Assistant National Certification Exam (PANCE) can seem like a daunting and nerve-racking process for any new PA graduate but I can confidently say that the Yale PA Program did a great job preparing my classmates and me for this undertaking.
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