PANCE Prep Plan

I plan to begin seriously studying for my PANCE in December, but I have been making preparations to streamline that for some time now and have been doing a lot of “passive” PANCE studying by studying for my EORs and OSCEs. I have been keeping track of my weak areas with this amazing tool that I found on Reddit, I seriously recommend it to everyone – Here’s the link, and I also posted it in our Class Drive  – I’ve been copying and pasting all my EOR missed keywords from my PAEA assessment hub, and it automatically organizes them by body system and question category, also generating me a review to-do list. From this, I have a clear idea of what I need to review by seeing what I have repeatedly gotten wrong over the course of this year.

Apparently ob-gyn and ortho/rheum are my weakest areas overall, so I plan to endeavor on extra practice questions on those categories. I also can see what specific diseases I have gotten questions wrong repeatedly, and I plan to review those topics in depth. For example, Multiple Sclerosis and Myasthenia Gravis seem to trip me up over and over, so they will both get extra attention. Clinical therapeutics and interventions seem to be my weakest question type, so I will also pay special attention to review those as I study. I compared my spreadsheet to my EOC performance and my weak areas seem to be fairly consistent across both, which is helpful to verify.
 
In terms of resources, I strategically have used only Rosh over the course of this year so that I could save Kaplan and UWorld to use for my PANCE-specific studying. I plan to do as many practice questions as I can, doing extra of the aforementioned categories and question types. Regarding the specific diseases that I seem to constantly struggle with, I will use Osmosis and my old ClinMed notes. I am a visual learner, so Osmosis really helps me to retain information that I otherwise find difficult to grasp. PANCE Prep Pearls is also perfect for this area of my studying, so I definitely will use it to review these problem topics as well.

Regarding timing, I plan to dedicate our week off December 9th-15th to studying as much as I can and then attend our on-campus review the following week. I want to slow my studying to give my brain a break between December 20th and 25th, celebrating graduation and Christmas. Then on December 26th, I will take a full-length practice test to see how I do, and then reassess my remaining weak areas and study them daily through New Year’s Eve. From there, I hope to feel prepared enough that I can take the days leading up to my exam day to rest, as I have found that to be best for my focus on exam day. While having a general study plan is important, I don’t want to make too detailed of a plan. I know by now that my ability to focus varies unpredictably on a daily basis. I have found that I perform better and feel better when I honor that part of myself, so I want to approach my study schedule with flexibility in which topics I cover each day — But I am confident I will get everything done because I always do!