2025 – PAGE 08 – THE PBR EFFICIENCY BLUEPRINT
The pediatric initial certification exam has one of the highest failure rates of any medical board exam. I URGE you to follow just a few of my simple but CRITICAL recommendations as you go through your board review experience. ESPECIALLY #1!
- PLEASE STICK TO ONE PRIMARY STUDY GUIDE – the PBR! Spreading yourself too thin by reviewing multiple resources is the BIGGEST MISTAKE you can make. I’ve gone through thousands of emails, interviews and surveys. It’s clear that this one, single recommendation that will increase your chances of board success more than anything else I can say.This is a key similarity amongst pediatricians who failed the boards but then went on to pass using the PBR system. So please do not spend your time going through other books, video courses or expensive live board review courses. Go through the PBR books (Core Study Guide + Q&A Book) and the PBR companion products (videos, MP3s, digital picture atlas, webinars) exclusively and give yourself a seamless, multimodal approach.
- Approach your PBR material by first simply SEEING all of the PBR content in the Core Study Guide and Q&A Book. Spend about 60–90 seconds per page to simply SEE everything that you will need to learn so that you have an idea about the type of knowledge you’ll need to acquire in order to pass this exam. This should take you a full day. DO NOT spend time writing notes of any kind during this process. Do NOT treat the Q&A Book like other questions. This is CORE content.During your first official read, leave no stone unturned. Crosscheck anything that confuses you. Create mnemonics, notes and drawings in the margins so that you understand EVERYTHING. Make sure that you will NEVER have to go outside of the PBR for additional knowledge or clarifications again. If you get stuck on a concept, reach out to your peers in the PBR Community (www.pbrlinks.com/community)! If you think you’ve found an error, notify us through our special error submission link (www.pediatricsboardreview.com/error). This will help you maintain your PACE and promote EFFICIENCY! When crosschecking, ONLY go outside of PBR briefly for possible errors or confusion. That’s it! Do NOT go down the black hole of GOOGLE! If after 5 minutes you’re still stuck, submit your question through the ASK THE EXPERT portal for that chapter and move on!
Your second time should be MUCH faster if you are using my highlighter system. Do NOT let your curiosity of non-PBR topics distract you. As you break up your studying time with questions, you WILL want to look up new topics and crosscheck facts between the PBR and PREP®. DO NOT DO IT! It’s a guaranteed waste of precious time that could be spent on the HIGHEST YIELD resources that you will have at your disposal to pass the board exam: PBR’s.
Your third, fourth and fifth times through the PBR content should strictly focus on adding more information into your long-term memory through repetition, through the use of mnemonics, and through the use of MULTIMODAL studying. Use audio, video, webinars, study buddy sessions, etc. Just use something to mix things up because it’s been proven to increase learning! Use the audio course everywhere, and use the video course in a later “recapture” round (more on this in the members’ area).
Again, you must resist that urge to look up extraneous information and you must focus on QUALITY study time. Ensure that your reading is focused on LEARNING and REMEMBERING the concepts. Do not simply read for the sake of reading, and do not study when you’re exhausted or irritable.
Your primary goal is to pass the exam. As long as you KNOW everything from the Core Study Guide + Q&A Book, you will have enough information in your brain to easily pass as long as you also have good test-taking strategy. However, if you try to learn “all of pediatrics” you will get overwhelmed and probably fail the exam. Map out the right number of hours based on your risk profile (more on this coming up) and hold yourself accountable.
- Use PBR’s Q&A book as additional, new CORE material. Also use it to get familiar with very high-yield topics and questions. The format is short and to the point without too much extra information. The questions will help you understand what types of key findings you need to identify on your practice questions and on your exam. Please remember that the Q&A book is considered CORE CONTENT. You need to KNOW IT COLD! Do NOT treat the PBR questions like PREP® questions.
- Go through at least 1000 practice questions. Don’t go through them all at once (much more on this in the schedule outlines below). As you go through the questions, work on your timing. If you can average about 1 minute and 15 seconds per question, you will be fine for the boards. Do not try to understand why every single incorrect answer is wrong. Just focus on the correct answer, and if your answer is wrong, figure out WHY it’s wrong. Skip explanations about all of the other answer choices.When evaluating WHY you answered a question wrong, figure out if it was because of a CONTENT problem or if it was due to a TECHNIQUE problem. Even if you “think” you’re sure, trust me, it could still be a TECHNIQUE problem, and you must get help – www.pediatricsboardreview.com/strategies.
Did you answer a question incorrectly because of a CONTENT issue? Meaning, you had a knowledge deficiency? If so, was the content in the PBR? If the answer is “yes” then you MUST know that information. If the answer is “no” then do NOT worry about it! Do NOT start looking at Nelson’s, Harriet Lane, Google, UpToDate, etc. It’s a black hole that you must avoid because it will only overwhelm you, and it will keep you from the two main goals of knowing the PBR CONTENT COLD and PRACTICING tons of questions to master your test-taking technique!
Remember, the AAP writes PREP®, the ABP writes the boards. Going through three to four years of PREP® is great, but keep in mind that the resource is great for CME. Any single year of PREP® questions is not designed to be a stand-alone study guide for the ABP exam. The questions are EXCELLENT for practicing and mastering your test-taking technique, but your highest-yield information will come from the PBR study guides and systems. If you need MORE practice questions, you can get discounted practice questions by visiting www.pediatricsboardreview.com/tools.
Did you answer a question incorrectly because of a TECHNIQUE issue? Did you add extra information and assumptions to the question or the answers that led you to the wrong answer? Did you spend too much time on a question even though it was clear that you didn’t have the knowledge to answer it? Did the question-writer trick you with a distractor? Did the question writer trick you with an English question instead of a clinical question? Did you get anxious or nervous under a timed mock exam? Did you often get stuck between seemingly similar answer choices? Are you still confused about why the answer you chose is wrong?
Make notes about the kinds of issues you’re having and try to figure out solution and strategies to avoid similar pitfalls in the future. If you notice that TECHNIQUES-BASED PROBLEMS creeping in over and over again, or you don’t know what I mean by “technique,” you need to seek out help through the PBR Test-Taking Strategies & Coaching course at www.pediatricsboardreview.com/strategies.
- EXTREMELY Important Test Day Tips: PLAN to be successful. You will find two links below. The first breaks down the number of questions, time per block, etc. for your exam. The second is a list of excellent PBR articles.