Blog 3: My first PA exam experience

The exam was for human gross anatomy and consisted of 125 questions (75 written exam + 50 practical exam). The material covered for the exam included 16 lectures detailing the intricacies of the human body from the back, vertebral column, shoulder, arm, forearm, thorax, lungs, and heart. As the days got closer to exam day I slowly felt the anxiety and nervousness building. I knew I had put in endless hours of studying but the self doubt was extremely apparent. It started off feeling like any other large first test of the semester in a new class. Nervous because you aren’t sure what to expect, how questions are worded, if you are focusing on the testing material, etc. However, professors and second year PA students were all saying it is okay to do poorly, many people struggle on the first exam, I got a C on the first exam. They included words of encouragement like you will get through this or you can bounce back from a bad grade. In my opinion they were preparing us to fail and expecting many of us to stumble which caused myself and my classmates to feel like it might be an unfair battle. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the support we have received from the faculty and our mentors and I am so grateful for everything they have done for us already, only 3 weeks into the semester.

I took the exam on my TJU issued iPad on an app many PA schools use for exam administration called Examplify. The exam was all multiple choice and the app software makes it easy to flag questions, cross of answers, and return to previous questions. The morning part of the exam had 75 written exam questions with many questions considered clinical correlations. For example, if a patient was stabbed and is suffering from right hemothorax and pneumothorax where would you perform the thoracocentesis in the mid axillary plane— answer right intercostal space at T9/T10. Many questions included common injuries, lesions to nerves resulting in deformities, and blood vessels. The professor limited the number of picture/ identification questions because they would be used later in the practical portion. I found that I knew the more difficult complex questions and struggled with the mundane ones such as what bone has a feature called the jugular notch— answer the manubrium of sternum. The practical exam was very straight forward with almost all of the questions being identification through dissection, MRI, CT, or X-ray imaging. I doubted my knowledge several times throughout which led to second guessing and not going with my gut resulting in wrong answers. I think that is relatively normal to do a few times especially considering that it was the first exam in anatomy. Although I know it is difficult to do, I challenge you to not change your answers and to trust your gut so you do not make the same mistake as me!

I performed extremely well on both parts and beat my expectations however, I will not be sharing my grades because I want to honor our classes decision to keep grades to ourselves. That may seem strange to some as it is completely different than undergrad however, PA school does not seem to be competitive between classmates. It is a collaborative environment where we have tried to provide one another with encouragement and helpful resources to succeed and reach our collective goal of all becoming physician assistants TOGETHER!

My undergraduate education in exercise science from The University of Scranton has already proven to be a tremendous help within the first few weeks of classes. Because many questions included clinical relevance the classes such as “advanced human anatomy and kinesiology” and “prevention and care for sports injuries” were beneficial in my understanding of the course materials. For me, my success came from reviewing/ studying for about 4-5 hours a day using apps such as draw it to know it and teach me anatomy, watching YouTube videos for clarification, viewing dissection videos, observing Acland atlas videos, and testing my understanding through online quizzes. Everyone’s study habits and learning styles are different and you must explore to find what works best for you.

Please reach out to me if you have any questions or need help with anything!

I wish you all the best on your exams in PA school.

You got this!