Should you take a boards/PANCE prep course?

 Should you take a boards/PANCE prep course? 

Well considering I spent my birthday attending one, I’d recommend it- at least I tried to make it as fun as possible! Here’s the details:

There are a few different companies out there, but I chose a 4-day course that breaks up body systems into 50min-3 hour lectures depending on the amount of material to get through. We were mailed a giant binder with well-organized and tabbed lecture materials so we could follow along and take notes. Each day was about 9-5:30 and then there is a 60-question exam to complete each night with instructions that help you decipher your score and predict if you’d do well on the PANCE. The lecturers are all practicing PAs and experts in their field, and they did a fantastic job. I felt like they all had new perspectives on ways to remember high-yield information, and helped talked through some of the more difficult concepts, like ABGs (am I right?!). This was supposed to be an in-person course, but this year, since it was online, students were offered the chance to complete the course twice! So I did it during my off time of rotations in May, and then this weekend, closer to graduation.

Overall: it was a very intense 4 days, but I feel more ready to start the studying before my boards (so soon). This, by no means, is a replacement for studying on your own, but it was a great supplementation. Another cool thing is that if you attend every lecture and pass all 4 nightly exams, and then don’t pass your boards, you get a refund on the course. That alone made me confident enough that this was a good move. I’m sharing this information because it’s something people have asked me about, but plenty of people still pass without it: not mandatory, but helpful. I’ll take that confident boost and knowledge any day.

✤Courtney