Welcome to the Physician Associate Resources website and our new blog. I wanted to start by giving you an introduction to the website we have created and some background on how the idea came about.

Creating Physician Associate Resources allowed us to create a platform for Physician Associate specific revision and learning. All of the revision resources are created by Physician Associates, to share their work in many styles such as revision posters, flash cards and written notes. Our hope is that over time the revision resources section will grow as more Physician Associates share their revision aids, so we can pool our resources and grow our knowledge together.

We have also created the MCQ and OSCE areas to allow Physician Associate students to directly test their knowledge. The MCQ’s are written in the style of the National Physician Associate Examination and are grouped by body system so you can test your knowledge on each area. As you may see from the coming soon section, we will continue to add to the MCQ questions and hope to create a full mock exam paper which can be completed in timed conditions.

The final area we have developed in the OSCE scenarios. These scenarios are again written in the style of the National Physician Associate Examination and each OSCE contains a PA vignette, a patient information sheet and a mark scheme. These scenarios will help you practice the range of skills that you are required to demonstrate during the practical examination, including advanced skills like breaking bad news. Creating the three sections also allows you to work in small groups or practice at home with relatives as you can provide them with the ‘patient information sheet’ which guides them through the information they should provide in response to the PA’s questions. You also have a mark scheme available so you can be marked as you go along or use for reflection at the end.

To give you some background on the creation of Physician Associate Resources, the idea came about whilst studying in our final year of the Physician Associate course a number of years ago. As many of you will know the Physician Associate course is intense and covers theoretical teaching as well as practical hours on place in hospitals and GP practices. The theoretical part of the course covers many medical conditions across all body systems and are all detailed in the Physician Associate matrix of core conditions. At the beginning of the course, the amount to content to cover seems insurmountable, however most Universities break it down by body system into themed weeks. As with all University courses alongside the taught content you are expected to complete self-study, which brings up common questions such as: How much do I need to learn? Do I need to know the background science? How much time should I spend on each condition? The challenge comes when balancing learning about conditions in depth, with ensuring you cover all the content of that topic so you keep up with the pace of the course.

We are all aware that different people have different learning styles and that reading an entire textbook is not always the best way to learn. So, in looking for alternative and interactive ways of learning, we came across medical revision websites, of which there are many to choose from. Learning online allows the sharing of resources that other people have created as well and providing important revision aids such as practice exam questions. Unfortunately, when we studied there were no Physician Associate specific resources available, which meant picking through the medical sites to find things that were relevant and applied to the PA course. It also made it difficult to do any practice revision questions as they were aimed at the medical curriculum and not PA specific.

The experience allowed us create a Physician Associate specific website full of resources and interactive learning as well as exam style practice questions and OSCE scenarios. We hope you find this website useful and wish you all the best with your Physician Associate studies.

All the best,

Physician Associate Resources