Resources for PA Students

Everyone studies differently, of course. But I wanted to share some of the resources that have helped me survive PA school!

BOOKS

PANCE Prep Pearls
This one is an absolute must-have, and I'm pretty sure any PA student will tell you this. It takes a minute to get used to how it's formatted, but this book is a great way to review prior to your exams. The newer version is actually two separate books (which is nice because the one book is pretty heavy!).

Lange Q&A
One of the ways I like to study is with practice questions. It's one thing to review all the information, and entirely another to be able to put that information to use in clinical scenarios. My university provides a short practice test on ExamMaster, but generally I am looking for more than just a handful of questions to practice. Highly recommend this book.

Rapid Interpretation of EKGs
This obnoxious orange book is also a little weird to read, but it's a good way to learn how to read EKGs. This was required for us to purchase for our first semester, and I am planning to read this again during my summer break to keep my skills in tact.

Antibiotics Simplified
I've struggled to learn antibiotics, and this book was recommended by pharmacy residents at my hospital. So far, it has been a very helpful survival resource, and I really plan to dig deeper in this over my summer break, so that I can go into my next year of didactic feeling more confident.

Maxwell Quick Medical Reference

A small but mighty little guide to carry in your pocket during clinicals! Recommended to me by PAs and MDs alike.

Pocket Medicine: The Massachusetts General Hospital Handbook of Internal Medicine

Another great reference to have during clinicals, or so I've heard from both PAs and MDs. Plus, I got a killer deal on this book from Walmart.com.

WEBSITES

APPS

TOOLS

Laptop: HP Envy x360
I ended up buying this laptop during my first summer semester after cracking the screen on my old laptop. This ended up being a huge blessing in disguise because I LOVE this laptop. I'm not an Apple fangirl (probably mostly because it's expensive), and I am so used to Windows at this point, that it didn't make sense for me to change. Also, I have just an absolute kickass setup for online learning. I attach this to my HP monitor, flip the screen around, watch my lectures on the monitor and take notes on the PowerPoint slides that I've imported into OneNote. It's such a great setup.

Comments

Three months: My life as a new PA-C

As I'm sure many new PA's can attest to, the end of PA school is a bit of a blur. One minute you're finishing up classes and studying for the PANCE and the next you're ... here? Three months into practice and wondering how it happened. Graduation was on May 13, 2022, and that was a really wonderful day. My parents came to support me, I enjoyed beers on the terrace with my friends, and I felt wonderful standing on the other side of three years of grad school. After a quick day of relaxation, I hit the ground running with my studying. I stuck with my plan for the most part, and felt equal parts "I can't possibly study any more!" and "But I'm not ready!" when exam day arrived. I happened to be at the very same testing center as a fellow student, so when we finished our exams, we headed over to the local mexican restaurant to enjoy tacos and well-deserved margaritas. Hilariously, our brains were so absolutely melted from testing that we could

Rotation #3: Internal Medicine (and pondering my future)

When I decided to go back to school to be a physician assistant, internal medicine is what I had in my mind. As a clinical dietitian, I had the chance to collaborate with APPs and loved the idea of being able to provide that kind of care to patients. One of the APPs who I had the chance to work with often while I was a dietitian became my preceptor for this rotation! It was very cool to be standing in the exact spot I had imagined back then. Back then, though, I did not appreciate just how challenging this job would be! I worked with a small private practice group that has privileges at various area hospitals, and my preceptor and I were based at one large metro-area hospital. The service was crazy busy the entire time I was there, and that was both good and bad. I got to see a ton of different diagnoses, a wide variety of patients, and was challenged to be relatively independent. But dang, it was hard to keep up most of the time. Honestly, I worked more and was more exhausted during

Rotation #2: General Surgery

Another one bites the dust! It's crazy to me that another rotation (and therefore all of my surgery experience) has come to an end. If I want to be one thing, it's totally honest. This rotation was challenging . I had a ton of fun during orthopedics -- I felt like a lot of providers and residents wanted to show off how great their subspecialties were. And they succeeded! But I didn't get pimped very much and I wasn't seeing patients independently. That all changed in a big way when I went to general surgery. Did I learn a lot because of this? Absolutely. Did I feel like an absolute pile of garbage most days because I felt like I couldn't do or answer a damn thing right? Yes. Did I talk to my classmates and get some reassurance that many rotations feel like this? Also yes. Thanks for making me feel less alone, guys. The days were long and the list of things to study was even longer. But here we are, one rotation down. We've survived, so far at least! One big t

OJ the PA

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