How to Study Clinical Medicine in PA School: A Real System
How to Study Clinical Medicine in PA School: A Real System
By: Savanna Perry, PA-C
A complete, repeatable system for studying clinical medicine in PA school: pre-read a patho primer before each unit, rebuild lecture slides into one-page-per-disease study guides, layer in color-coded notes from review books like PANCE Prep Pearls, then spend the final week on subject-specific practice exams.
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How Do You Start a New Clinical Medicine Unit?
Before lectures begin, pre-read the relevant chapter of a pathophysiology primer (Pathophysiology Made Ridiculously Simple is the classic). Don't worry about memorizing at this stage. You're building the scaffold so lecture content has somewhere to land.
Read it again the night before the exam as a final pass. Bookending the unit this way means you start with context and finish with consolidation.
What's the One-Page-Per-Disease Method?
Rebuild your professor's PowerPoints into your own document, one disease per page, in a consistent order: epidemiology, pathophysiology, clinical presentation, labs/imaging, treatment, complications.
The alternative format some students prefer is a table with diseases down the first column and those same categories across the top. Either way, the act of reformatting IS the studying, and because everything typed comes straight from lectures, you end up with a trustworthy, testable source of truth. Expect the build to take about a week per unit, then print it.
This system comes from Jamie Murawski, who wrote it as a PA student at the University of Detroit Mercy (you may know her from r/prephysicianassistant, which she helped moderate). Her full annotation pass took 10-12 focused hours per unit, which is a real investment, but it produced a single trustworthy document to study from instead of a pile of scattered sources.
Which Review Books Are Worth Layering In?
Two books earn permanent desk space:
PANCE Prep Pearls: the super-condensed version of everything you need to know. Ideal for pre-exam review and for highlighting what's most important in your own notes.
- Step-Up to Medicine: technically a USMLE Step 2 book, but excellent for clinical medicine, with more depth on pathophysiology and epidemiology.
Annotate your printed guide by hand, color-coded by source (e.g., course text in blue, Step-Up in green, PPP in pink). You'll always know where a fact came from. Weight your highlighting toward the NCCPA PANCE Blueprint topics.
Every Pre-PA Should Know...
Highlight your study guide according to the NCCPA PANCE Blueprint. If a topic is weighted heavily on boards, it deserves the heavy ink in your notes from day one of didactic year.
How Should You Use Practice Exams?
Spend the final week of each unit on practice questions, broken down by subject:
SmartyPANCE: subject-specific practice tests plus pearl-style reviews; great mid-unit check.
- HippoEd: slightly harder questions and strong video content; take these closer to the exam.
- Rosh Review: famously difficult, with detailed answer breakdowns showing how you compare to other test-takers. Great for analysis, but rough on confidence right before an exam.
- Lange Q&A: physical book with full explanations; check edition currency, as older printings had dated treatments.
The rhythm is one week building the guide, one week annotating, and one week practicing.
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Listen: Study Habits That Actually Work in PA School
The way you studied in undergrad will not work in PA school.
The way you studied in undergrad will not work in PA school.
The volume is the thing nobody prepares you for. You get more material in a week than you used to get in a semester, and the students who struggle usually aren't the ones who can't handle it. They're the ones still using a method that only worked when there was time to reread everything.
Start by knowing how you actually learn. The VARK assessment is a quick way to figure out whether you're getting more out of reading, listening, drawing it out, or doing. Then build your study time around that instead of copying whatever your smartest classmate does.
Keep the boards in your peripheral vision the whole time. Work practice questions from different sources so you're not just memorizing one question bank's style.
And eat something. Sleep. You cannot outstudy a body you're running into the ground.
What I cover
Why undergrad study habits break down in PA school
Using the VARK assessment to find your learning style
Adapting your methods to the volume of material
Keeping board prep in mind from day one
Using varied question banks and resources
Protecting your health while you're in it
Resources
Follow The Pre-PA Club: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · All episodes
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Need to Know:
Pre-read a patho primer before each unit; re-read it the night before the exam.
Rebuild lecture slides into one page per disease, in a consistent category order.
Annotate by hand, color-coded by source, weighted to the PANCE Blueprint.
Final week: subject-specific practice exams (SmartyPANCE, HippoEd, Rosh).
Budget roughly a week each for building, annotating, and practicing.
FAQ
PANCE Prep Pearls is the near-universal PA student staple; Step-Up to Medicine adds depth on pathophysiology. Most students use both alongside lecture notes.
This system runs about three weeks per unit: a week building a study guide, a week annotating (10-12 hours of focused work), and a week of practice exams.
They're widely considered harder than most program exams. The answer explanations and percentile comparisons are valuable, but don't let the scores rattle you right before a test.
Lectures are your testable source of truth; review books layer on organization and board-relevance. Color-coding by source lets you use both without confusion.
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You Need a System, Not Just Willpower
You don't have to use this exact system, but you do need a system, because the volume of clinical medicine is too much to wing. Steal the parts that fit how you learn, keep your sources color-coded, and let the PANCE Blueprint set your priorities from the first week of didactic year.
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