When you're preparing to take the PANCE or PANRE, you may feel like you have to know an endless amount of information. How will you ever remember all the details of so many diseases and conditions? Here, you can review some useful mnemonics that will not only help your recall as you prepare for your physician assistant exam but also improve your clinical acumen.

You can use the alphabetic classification system to evaluate melanoma, the most aggressive form of skin cancer. This guide helps you determine whether a skin lesion is malignant. The mnemonic is the first five letters of the English alphabet — A, B, C, D, and E. Here are the warning signs: A = asymmetry: If one side of the lesion differs from the other, the lesion is more likely to be malignant.

There are multiple skin conditions you will need to be aware of for the Physician Assistant Exam (PANCE). Although there are several more that should be studied, make sure you familiarize yourself with these basics. Keratosis lesions You need to be aware of two types of keratosis lesions: Actinic keratosis: This skin lesion is caused by excessive exposure to the sun or UV light.

Skin cancer is a common finding that is covered on the Physician Assistant Exam (PANCE), and it’s usually identified by a person’s primary care provider. The four cutaneous malignancies you should know about for the PANCE/PANRE are Kaposi’s sarcoma, basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell cancer, and melanoma. Kaposi’s sarcoma Kaposi’s sarcoma is a purplish maculopapular rash on the extremities and mucous membranes of the body.

In anemia, the body has a reduced quantity of red blood cells. One of the best ways to classify anemia is by the MCV, or mean corpuscular volume, which is expressed in femtoliters (fL). The MCV helps you think about the cause of the anemia and how to evaluate for it: Microcytic anemias (low MVC, Think TAIL: thalassemia, anemia of chronic disease, iron deficiency anemia, lead poisoning.

When you're treating a non-ST elevation myocardial infarction (an NSTEMI), keep OH BATMAN in mind. The mnemonic works for treating unstable angina, too. O = oxygen: Ischemia implies oxygen deprivation, which leads to increased myocardial oxygen demand and increased myocardial work. The goal of treatment is to reduce the workload of the heart.

An APGAR score measures how well a newborn is doing at 1 and 5 minutes after birth. The five factors you evaluate just happen to line up with the last name of the doctor, Dr. Virginia Apgar, who created the scoring system. Here are the APGAR factors: A = appearance: The skin color should be pinkish. P = pulse: The pulse should be 140–160 beats per minute.

The National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants administers the two tests that are required of Physician Assistants: the PANCE, which certifies you to work as a PA, and the PANRE, which you take every 6 years (or 10 years starting in 2014) for recertification. Here is a quick overview of each test.

To do well on the Physician Assistant Exams (PANCE or PANRE), you need a good sense of broad-based surgical concepts, not encyclopedic knowledge about a specific topic. One vital area is the surgical signs and symptoms that you’d focus on when performing a history and physical (H&P). You need to know the essentials of a thorough pre-operative assessment (including pre-operative risk) and how to care for the post-operative patient.