Physician Assistant Board Review: Certification and Recertification with online exam simulation. Expert Consult - Online and Print,   ISBN:9781416025986

Customer Rating: 

I loved the idea that this book presented the material to you based on the blueprints. Thus it ensures that it at least touches upon all topics that might be encountered on the PANCE. However, I thought overall that it lacked indepth detail. I didn't feel comfortable studying only from this. The questions in the book are easy; I never took the practice questions from the bank, though. For questions, I like studying from the AAPA review book. I found that to be the closest to the actual exam.

Customer Rating: 

I liked the book and questions but when I went to do the practice test online - there was no website! Unless this is a temporary glitch, it's very disappointing!!!

Customer Rating: 

I'd like to give this 5 stars but I can't because of some sloppy editing - crainial nerves misordered in the index, review questions presented before the topic is covered or answers not provided within the content of the review material. While I caught some or perhaps all of these errors, the frustration is that you have lingering doubts as to whether or not what you are learning is correct or not throughout the book - call it a lack of trust. This means that you have to cross reference the material eg the table of myocardial infarctions with other references to see if the information is good (it was good in this instance). Time that could have been spent just sucking in the information instead of verifying it.

So this keeps it from getting 5 stars. Now the rest of the story. The ordering sequence follows the PANCE outline quite accurately, which is exceptionally nice. The second part of the outline is only briefly mentioned in the index and could have been discussed in more detail IMO.

I also purchased Auth's book, Physician Assistant Review 3. In a head to head comparison, this book wins hands down and the Auth book comes in a distant second and ultimately was hardly used.

I purchased close to $1k of new medical books to review for this exam. Of all of them, this was the single most useful book. I literally wore the book out to where I had to restaple the book back together. Not a fault of the binder I suppose, but of the amount of use it received.

This book is the single most succint source of information for covering the required information out there. But it goes beyond that. Even if you were not studying for the PANCE exam, this is one of the most information packed sources of knowledge on general medicine I've seen.

I would strongly recommend using this book with a good medical dictionary alongside as many terms used are not defined. In practice, this forced me to do more work, but made the definitions of terms reinforced and expanded my medical vocabulary in the process.

So even though I have to reluctantly give it a 4 star rating for editorial quality, because of the exceptional quality of the content of this book, I consider it a superb book, one that should be bought both for the exam and as a reference afterwards.

I did not have a chance to use the online resources, so I can't comment on that for this review.

Customer Rating: 

I like the way the book is organized with an outline format and periodic questions throughout. It is easy to follow and easy to find information from both the glossary and the table of contents. I hope I pass my board exam!

Customer Rating: 

For an "experienced PA educator" as the front page states, the author seems to have many problems with spelling, grammar, and overall editing. I was very disappointed to find little mistakes (at least several per chapter), however the information is organized nicely and so far it has been a great review. I'd recommend the author re-editing this book - other than the typos, it's nicer than any other PANCE study guide that I've found.