Thank you for joining me! As many of you know, I have been involved in preparing students for the PANCE for over 25 years, including the development of a risk model system to identify students who require more time and effort before taking the exam.  My greatest passion in my career as a faculty member is facilitating success for PA students.

In that vein, I’m pleased to present an overview of my PANCE Solutions Master Class, a course designed to provide guidance and a strategic approach to the certification exam. The Master Class is not a board review class; we won't be discussing content. I’m not going to lecture about congestive heart failure! Instead, every week of the course, I’ll discuss strategies that'll help you prepare for the PANCE, regardless of whether you are months or weeks away. It’s not just about the PANCE, either. Many of the test-taking and study concepts will help you even if you’re in the middle of a clinical year.

Here are the details: The Master Class offers ongoing guidance to help you pass the certification exam, drawing on over 30 years of experience. We’ll meet online each week for 90 minutes, with 60 minutes dedicated to content and strategy, followed by 30 minutes of synergistic Q&A sessions. This master class covers all key strategies within four weeks.

Master Class Learning Objectives:

Upon completion of this Master Class, the participant will be able to develop the following strategies:

1.   Conquer your test-taking fears by breaking down practice questions into the sum of the parts. Test-taking inexperience and anxiety are key factors contributing to why students fail the PANCE. The struggle is not about content, but rather about the strategies of test-taking. We’re going to unpack that by breaking down how questions can be approached in a way that will increase performance levels.

2.  Develop a 6–10-week comprehensive individualized study plan that synergistically includes practice questions along with focused content review. Using the 2025 PANCE blueprint as the foundation, along with a comprehensive approach to practice questions and concentrated content review, we’ll develop a study plan.

3.   Unlock the power of the Pomodoro method to increase your efficiency. I still use this tried-and-true method to this day: it’s an approach to improving your concentration efficiency. You’re going to need that kind of efficiency as you begin to study for your PANCE exam, and the skill remains useful throughout a long and busy career.

4.  Approach content review using metacognitive methods that identify your weaknesses and deficits in knowledge rather than repetitive review. I’ll focus on how content review can be augmented using metacognitive methods to identify your weaknesses and knowledge deficits. Many students engage in what I call “repetitive content review,” which is essentially a surface-level review. What that does is reinforce the same concepts over and over, but it never reaches a sufficiently deep approach to answer the questions at the level of the PANCE. I’ll also be discussing first, second, and third-order questions.

5. Develop your tool chest of resources, including practice questions and NCCPA practice exams. I’ll talk about test banks and the use of practice exams. These can be a good prognostic approach to let you know when you’ll be ready. Another essential technique we can learn to use is self-review—the invaluable art of examining incorrect test answers and discovering, “Where did I go wrong?” 

6.  Self-assess your preparedness based upon a master database of performance based upon 1200 previous PA students who have taken PACKRAT I/II, the PAEA EOR, and the EOC. Depending upon what your program does, most of them use some kind of benchmark (the PACKRAT, EOC exams, etc.) to give you a sense of your level of preparation. I have used a combination of all these factors, along with NCCPA practice exams and your performance on the test bank, to give you a sense of when you are ready to take the PANCE. 

I will share some stratification data that will be very helpful, based on more than 1,200 previous PA students. I’ve been developing a risk modeling system for many years. The model takes into account students and their two academic years in PA school, then regresses their performance on these indicators and provides a predictive PANCE score. 

That predictive score provides them with a sense of where they stand concerning the material that must be understood, as well as their test-taking abilities. This information strongly indicates whether they should proceed with the PANCE or if additional preparation time is needed.

Mark your calendars!

If you would like to participate in the next presentation of PASS AND EXCEL, we’ll be announcing the dates and times for the October session soon. You can sign up now by clicking the button below to reserve your seat