The Physician Assistant National Recertification Exam must be taken and passed at least once every six years in order to maintain your certification. The test is administered by the NCCPA. It is composed of 240 multiple choice questions and is about four hours long. If you want to keep your certification you must take the test. The problem is that knowing you have to take the PANRE and committing to take it are two different things. This is a difficult step for most physician assistants. You have not sat for an exam in 5 years. You have little or no interest in most of the topics you need to review. Regardless, you must at some point chose to take the exam and prepare for it.
Registration and Scheduling
You first become eligible to take the PANRE during your 5th year after passing the PANCE. You may take the exam twice during your 5th year. These two attempts must be at least 90 days apart. The same guidelines apply during your sixth year.
In order to be able to take the PANRE twice in one year the first attempt needs to be scheduled in early September. That leaves 90 days before the end of the year just in case you need to take it again. There is no testing the last week in December so be sure to schedule your first attempt early enough.
Once you have decided to take the PANRE you should visit the NCCPA. Log into your account and in the left hand column there will be a link for exam registration that will walk you through the process. The registration fee for the PANRE is $350. During registration you must also decide which version of the PANRE to take.
The PANRE now has three variations. The options are adult medicine, surgery and primary care, which is the standard version of the PANRE. 60% of the material is the same across all three options. The remaining 40% will focus more heavily on the area that you chose. The NCCPA clearly states that all three of the exams are equally difficult and continue to be generalist exams where the content blueprint still applies.
Once you are registered you have 180 days to take the exam as long as you are not coming up on the end of your 6th year. If you are at the end of your 6th year you obviously have less time. Next you will receive an e-mail from the NCCPA directing you to schedule your exam with Pearson Vue. Pearson Vue is the company who administers the exam. The e-mail will contain a link to where you can schedule the time and location of your PANRE. There is a tutorial for the PANRE at http://www.pearsonvue.com/nccpa/ which reviews how the computer software functions during the exam. Completing this ahead of time will give you one less thing to worry about on the day of the exam.
The Test Itself
The PANRE is made up of 240 multiple choice questions. The questions are called clinical vignettes, meaning you are given a patient presentation or problem with all of the clinical information needed to answer the question. The topics for the questions come directly from the content blueprint which can be found on the NCCPA website at http://www.nccpa.net/ExamsContentBlueprint.aspx. The breakdown is listed below.
Practice Tasks
H&P 16%
Using Labs and other studies 14% ***
Formulating most likely diagnosis 18%
Health Maintenance 10%
Clinical Intervention 14%
Pharmaceutical Therapeutics 18%
Applying Basic Science Concepts 10%
*** You will be supplied with all of the normal lab values during the exam. You do not have to memorize normal lab values.
Disease/Disorder by Organ System
Cardiovascular 16%
Pulmonary 12%
GI/Nutritional 10%
Musculoskeletal 10%
EENT 09%
Reproductive 08%
Endocrine 06%
Genitourinary 06%
Psych 06%
Neuro 06%
Dermatologic 05%
Hematologic 03%
ID 03%
The test is broken up into four sixty minute blocks. Each block contains sixty questions. This gives you approximately one minute per question. You will be allowed to take a break between each block. There are forty five minutes allotted for breaks during the exam which may be split between these three breaks in whatever way you choose. When taking the exam remember to fill in an answer for each question. Your score is based only on the number of questions that you get right. There is no penalty for guessing. Once a block is finished you may not return to it, so be sure you have marked an answer for every question.
Typically you will receive your results in two to three weeks. This will include your score as well a breakdown of how you did in each section. Hopefully you won’t need this information, but if you need to retake the exam it can be helpful. Good Luck!