Is using ChatGPT cheating?

I am in my first semester of PA school and one of best tools to study has been ChatGPT which I use to create outlines, practice questions and summarizations from my class slides. I have not used it to write any assignments or anything that has to be submitted. Just my own personal use. I don't really believe this can be considered cheating but something in the back of my mind is trying to convince me otherwise. It feels like because these are tactics that previous PA students weren't able to use, I'm somehow using a shortcut and cheating the PA school experience by using AI. Does that make sense? Does anyone else feel like that? Do you see this as cheating?

I currently completed 72% of Uworld and have a 66% score. Is this too low? I plan to finish the bank in the next 3 days. I've been studying for three weeks now.

I am scheduled to take the pance in a week. I am still trying to remember different antibiotics for different dx, mechanisms of action pharm, immunization schedules, etc. I don't know if I should push it or just take my chances. Any advice from people who took it?

PACKRAT 1: 114

PACKRAT 2: 145

EOC: 1530

After seeing some posts asking if PA residencies are worth it, I figured I'd chime in after having completed one.

The Houston VA Psychiatry Residency is accepting applicants currently for a summer start (Start date is flexible, just in case your program is graduating end of summer). Despite the freezes, the funding is secured and they are accepting. The residency takes place within the nation's largest VA Healthcare center but also has the benefit of being associated with the Baylor College of Medicine DO/MD Psychiatry Residency for the didactic lecture series. Having come from a PA program that was more of a community medicine based program, the ability to spend a year in the academic environment learning from attendings who are at the forefront of EBM research (As well as passionate about teaching) was refreshing.

If Psychiatry is not your type, but you have a passion for geriatrics, the Houston VA also has a great geriatric PA residency, of which I have known many class mates go through and report satisfaction with the program.

https://www.va.gov/houston-health-care/work-with-us/internships-and-fellowships/physician-assistant-post-graduate-residency-in-mental-health/

Having worked in mental health/psychiatry both prior to, during, and after PA school I can say that the residency was not only beneficial from a personal learning and development point of view, but also career wise. Feel free to ask any questions or DM me. Good luck heading into your final rotations for those graduating soon!

Hi, guys!

I just started my program about 3 weeks ago! I’m so happy to be there and grateful I made it in. I’m wondering anyone’s input on how you guys dealt with the sitting all day during didactic? I’m really struggling with numbness, lower back aches, and butt pain. I’m getting a walking pad so that I can get some steps in while also studying (rather than sitting), but does anyone have a suggestion for a butt cushion or something? I know this sounds so silly lol but just looking for something

One of my family relatives recently failed the PANRE

I had a few questions about what a potential curriculum would look like in order for her to pass during her next exam

1. Is studying for the PANRE more difficult than studying for the PANCE. Would you recommend a different approach for either one?
2. What would be all the curriculum and notes?

Here is some of the curriculum I’ve come across:

• ROSH - Work through the questions, do 60-question blocks and review what you got wrong.
• Uworld - Expensive but worth it IMO. Interface is 99% like the actual PANCE, and the vignettes were similar to PANCE.
• Cram the PANCE Podcast
• Pance PRep worlds
• Pance Prep Pearls (2017 and 2019 versions) plus question book
• Smarty Pance
• Barnes and Noble nook has a Mometrix
• PANRE exam question book for $9.99
• HIPPO EDUCATION - AAPA PANCE / PANRE REVIEW

I’m 4 weeks into my first semester and my classes right now are Phys and Anatomy w/2 filler classes. I feel like I could be more efficient with my studying, particularly in anatomy, and I wanted to get some other perspectives on my thoughts.

Currently what I do is essentially transcribe the PowerPoint lectures into GoodNotes and trim down the fat and whatnot into my own words, include diagrams and label them, etc. And then I make my Anki cards based off of my notes and study them. The act of writing the information helps it stick in my head, but the Anki cards are what I feel like are the meat and potatoes of how I’m learning. Our first anatomy exam is this Tuesday and I feel great about it tbh. Every time I study with other people or they have questions, I almost can always recall the information and answer their questions.

So what I’m wondering is should I skip the transcribing notes step and just make and study the Anki cards? The act of making the cards and understanding the content within the card as I’m making it is where I feel like I’m really retaining the info. I don’t want to jump the gun and start making changes before my first exam, but I’m trying to analyze what’s working best for me so I can make necessary adjustments regardless of the outcome and set myself up for more efficient studying in the future. Thanks guys!!

Hello everyone! I take my pance in a few weeks and I am a nervous wreck! I personally was an average PA student. Failed some exams but was able to bounce back after. So with that being said, thinking about the PANCE makes me go into panic mode. I personally thought the PAEA EOR’s were difficult. Would you say the PANCE is similar in difficulty to those just longer version or would you say the pance is way much harder? How would you rate the test based on difficulty from a scale of 1-10 (10 being the hardest)?

PA school: "You have 30 minutes for lunch." Me: stares at sandwich for 15 minutes, then spends the other 15 minutes frantically Googling lab values. Somehow, the lunch break is always a magic trick - poof, gone. Meanwhile, the non-PA students are out there, living their best lives with actual breaks. Anyone else feel this time warp?

New member here. I am in semester 3 out of 4 in my didactic. I have really enjoyed some topics, others have been grueling, but overall I would say my education is adequately preparing me for the PANCE - they are very PANCE focused with every lecture. Despite this I feel like so much time is spent memorizing indigestible quantities of info, taking tests, and just absorbing to regurgitate the information. Some days it feels like that’s all I do. Does it all stick during clinical year? Or is it when you take the PANCE? Maybe I remember more than I think, but a lot of feels like it went right into a sink hole.

So, as the title says. I failed the Pance. I failed a couple of MONTHS ago and I still cant get over the fact that I failed. It has made it incredibly hard to focus and study since I am assuming failure the second time around. I have every intention to study but its been impacted by my mental health, environment as well as personal family issues. I just cant get over this hurdle even though I have every intention to move on with my life and get this over with.I am seeing a therapist and psychiatrist and take meds but that doesn't seem to be helping as much as I thought it would. Any advice/feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Hi everyone! I am planning on taking my PANCE in Mid March. I am looking for someone that I can study with daily. I did really well in PA school working with my classmates, but since graduation most of my classmates already have passed. I have a plan already in mind and plan to start studying tomorrow. I am really only looking for 1-2 people to study with (as bigger groups can be distracting to me) and someone that essentially utilizes ANKI, PP and is open to hearing me out about the style of studying. I would like to study with someone that is accountable and that will show up day in and day out to help one another pass. If this is something you are interested in please leave a comment and/or message me directly.

Hello all! I have silently been a follower for a while but my journey comes down to next week taking my pance. I am so nervous. I feel like no matter how much I study whether Uworld or study guide I still don’t feel like I know everything- is this a universal feeling?? I have not completed uworld in its entirety (56% with 44% complete). I was a pretty average student all of PA school- never failed EORS and got 1445 EOC. I just wanted to hop on here and see if there was any advice new PA-C could give? I just want to feel like the test is doable in my mind it just seems like such a beast lol. Thank you in advance for all the advice!!

Hi y'all, just curious to know if anyone has been able to find, or take, boost exams on blueprint at all. Trying to study for my EOR coming up and I cannot find them for the life of me. I know Rosh had them on a dashboard, but I have yet to find anything on Blueprint. (not sure if the switch changed much else as I didn't own my own Rosh account before they rebranded)

Hard to believe they would take away the option for me to pay them more money lol.

i’m one month in and i feel so burnt out already. i feel like i get home and it takes me hours just to make anki or study guides from the 200 slides of lecture that day then i don’t even get to actually study because im making anki and im trying to catch up. i feel like my other classmates just understand concepts so quickly it takes me multiple forms of learning to fully understand things. does anyone know a better process to getting things down as a visual learner? anki has been great for memorizing definitions and names for things but i feel like it isn’t the best for me. 🥲 i’ve been trying to stress cry but my body has become so numb to all this stress it thinks crying will take time away from studying.

PA- S2 here. Been thinking about doing an ER PA fellowship after graduating. Just curious if anyone on here has done a fellowship or has any information that they would like to share. I know a lot of the fellowships sounds like a scam, but I think I found a good one with good people that will be beneficial for the long run.

My program provided us Blueprint but only the PANCE qbank and not the Rotation qbank. To me it doesn’t make sense why the questions would be all that much different other than additional topics, yet multiple students around me are saying that’s the case? I’m very nervous because I really wanted to drill questions this year primarily to study as I have such test-taking anxiety/poor testing skills. I don’t want to buy the rotation qbank. If the consensus is the questions are that different (in terms of depth for ex) then I plan on searching quizlets. Thanks

Hello! I just wanted to ask if there’s anybody on this subreddit who is currently in the following programs and can give any feedback regarding their experience in the following programs:

CUNY school of medicine LIU Pace Lenox Hill

Thank you!

My first EOR is next week and I’ve only been using UWorld since my school buys that. Rosh is like $400 and way out of my budget.

I’ve seen on here that the general consensus is ROSH for EOR and UWorld for PANCE.

Is UWorld enough for EOR studying? I will reset it by PANCE time and hopefully won’t remember the answers.

Any advice is greatly appreciated. I have been looking at this Reddit page before I even started PA school, and now I’m about to graduate in March. I need some serious feedback about using rosh vs Uworld. So many posts say Uworld is the way to go, but I simply can’t afford it. My classmates who got it say Uworld is too exhausting/ hard and they end up not using it anyways. My school pays for ROSH didactic and EOR banks. I don’t have the “big” rosh bank, but I have the individual EOR ones. I am trying to save every penny I can to afford to live after school. My school also sends us to different cities for rotations and makes us pay for it of course, so I don’t have a lot to spare even with taking out the full loan amount.

I also don’t LOVE rosh but it’s free!!

Am I setting myself up for failure if I only use PPP, podcasts/youtube, and rosh EOR banks? I use the Trello 8 week study plan through smarty pance as a good outline without paying for the videos, and I’m behind on that due to keeping up with my current rotation assignments /studying. I’m not a top student either that’s for sure. How should I study for the professionalism topics? Most people say Uworld but again, trying not to pay for things I don’t have to. My EORs have been so/so and I’m trying to buckle down but it’s hard to keep up with my own study plan. I take the pance in early April (just want to keep it over with and need a job)

If anyone else has been on a tight budget, please chime in on your methods :’) Thanks in advance!

I know I’ll probably have to pay for some practice exams as well so if you have an opinion on which is the best lmk. I’ve used hippo ed somewhat which is free. Not sure if they have practice pance exams though. Are the NCCPA practice exams free?

I feel like i struggle with the opposite problem than what i see on here. I do well on exams, feel confident (to an extent) on my study skills, but struggle so much with thinking on my feet… which is going to be all of clinicals and the rest of life as a PA. I’m excited for clinicals but anytime we have OSCES/simulation or anything along those lines, my mind goes blank. I’ll leave after and everything is so much clearer. I know i have anxiety in those situations which doesn’t help but i fear i am going to hate every minute of clinicals even though i learn best hands on. I already feel dumb when leaving our occasional simulations or when I am pimped on a question, so i can’t imagine all day every day doing things like that

edit: if anyone has felt this way pls tell me it gets better 😰😰

i am already a year behind after i had to go on a medical leave before our second summer semester.

last january my dog passed unexpectedly, it fucking broke me and i am only starting to feel better and move beyond the grief now.

before starting back up in september i had a brutal breakup and left a physically abusive partner.

on top of that i have had a wild year in terms of body/health changes, it’s been a slow recovery from a tbi in june, my 5th concussion, and PCS is here to stay it looks like.

my father just texted me telling me his gfr is under 15 and he is undergoing radiation for prostate cancer. he is 77 and has never taken good care of himself. he is on a million meds to manage heart disease and type 2 dm. i am terrified that i am going to lose him now too.

i cannot afford to step away from my program or get behind again. i cannot handle more hardship.

he told me not to tell my siblings so i am just sitting here panicking. i don’t know what to do.

Do any of y’all have hobbies? Maybe some that you did before PA school or started during school? I’m in didactic and I’m really craving to do something outside of studying. I work out an hour a week. But need something else lol

I just wanted to post this to know that this situation has happened to others and will be ok. Long story short, I used to hang out with my classmates all the time outside of class, but in this last semester of didactic year, I've noticed friends planning trips without me/making sure to not discuss them when I'm nearby. They also stopped asking to study with me. I just feel pretty isolated.

Hey everyone! LONG/VULNERABLE POST ALERT, but I am coming on here for some much needed advice. I recently found out that I failed the PANCE with a score of 309 (which is still mind boggling to me). To give you some insight, I was an average PA student with an overall GPA of 3.57. My EOR/EOC scores were as follows:

Emergency Medicine: 450

Family Med: 404

General Surgery: 418

IM: 434

Pediatrics: 398

Psych: 406

Womens Health: 414

EOC: 1525

Overall, I feel like I had decent scores throughout clinical year and never struggled (at least that I know of ) with testing anxiety. For PANCE prep, I created a 5 week plan which included all the topics from the NCCPA blueprint, PPP, Uworld (which I was doing 60 minute timed questions to get as similar to the PANCE as I could), and 2 NCCPA practice exams. I took the first practice exam 1 month out from the PANCE, and was 50% in yellow and 50% in green. The second practice exam I took 2 weeks out from the PANCE, and was 75% in green and 25% in yellow. I did better on the second exam, so, naturally I thought I was on the right track. I will say some of the questions on the PANCE I straight up did not know, and I walked out kind of feeling blah about the entire test. It was long, exhausting, and all a blur. I do not think any amount of studying could have prepared me for some of those questions. I kept telling myself the pass rate for the PANCE is in the testers favor, but unfortunately, I am apart of that 8% that did not pass on their first try. It has been so hard seeing my classmates post their passing scores and wrap my mind around another 3 months of studying. Obviously I plan reviewing my score report and my missed topics from the PANCE, but any other advice or recommendations on how to move forward, different resources I should use, or guidance of any sort would be amazing right now :)

I wanted to share my experience and offer support to anyone who struggles with testing anxiety.

To give you some background:

• I'm an average student—my GPA was 3.67, but I had to remediate a few exams during PA school.
• I passed all my EORs, scored 1425 on my EOC, and got 123 on the PACKRAT...

Here’s how I prepared:

• I studied 8 hours a day for 4 weeks using the Smarty PANCE blueprint, Cram the PANCE, and PANCE Prep Pearls.
• I used UWorld QBank for 3 weeks and ROSH QBank for the final week.
• I also took all 3 NCCPA practice exams over the 4 weeks. My first two were in the red, but the last one was green. 

I have testing accommodations, but I was still anxious. The night before the exam, I barely slept—maybe 3–4 hours. Even with all that stress, I passed. If I can do it, you can too!

Believe in yourself. You’ve studied for years to reach this point. Don’t let your anxiety overshadow your preparation. You’ve got this!

If you have any questions or just need some encouragement, feel free to message me—I’m here to help.

I've been using the Endeavor deck to prepare for EORs and I've unsuspended the cards tagged for the rotation I'm currently on. I've noticed that some cards in the deck don't have EOR tags and only have PANCE tags. For those that used this Anki deck, when did you complete these remaining cards? Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Do u use a template or those books from Amazon or a blank piece of paper? I just want to understand and fix my routine before I go into my rotations.

Does anyone have any any good resources for pertinent pharmacology for the pance? Trying to avoid over studying when it seems to be quite specific most of the time on a handful of drugs

Feeling really down because I couldn’t pass the PANCE. I made a lot of mistakes on one-liners and it cost me. Recently, I was diagnosed with ADHD, and I’m thinking of applying for an exemption to the 90-day retake policy as well as for accommodation. Does anyone know if the NCCPA would consider this or has experience with something similar? Please!! Need help :(