n this episode of the Physician Assistant Exam Review Podcast, we use breast complaints to do two things at once: sharpen your clinical pattern recognition and force you to upgrade how you organize your studying. We walk through the core breast topics that keep showing up on exams: mastitis vs breast abscess, fibroadenoma vs fibrocystic changes, galactorrhea, gynecomastia, and malignant breast neoplasms. You'll learn how to decide when to reassure and when to escalate by focusing on a few key levers: pain vs painless, mobile vs fixed, unilateral vs bilateral, and the red-flag skin and nipple changes you can't afford to miss.

Instead of memorizing an alphabetical list like "mastitis, abscess, fibroadenoma…" we reorganize everything around the actual decisions you'll be tested on: infection vs neoplasm, benign vs malignant, reassure vs refer, and which labs or imaging come first. We'll use tight priming questions to push you on: when to think abscess, when a painless, rubbery mass in a young woman is actually reassuring, what to do with cyclic bilateral pain, what lab to check in galactorrhea, and the exact next step when you see a hard, fixed mass with skin dimpling.

We also talk honestly about why most people never do this kind of reorganization: it exposes gaps, and that's uncomfortable. But that discomfort is exactly where your score improves. If you're working hard but your results don't match the effort, this episode will help you think different, work different, and score different.

In this episode of the Physician Assistant Exam Review Podcast, we tackle skin integrity from two angles: what you need to recognize on exams, and how to reorganize your studying so you can finally see (and fix) your gaps. We walk through burns, lacerations, pressure injuries, urticaria, pilonidal disease, and the big three skin cancers: basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma. You'll learn how exam questions are actually written: TBSA and depth for burns, time and contamination for laceration closure, staging and offloading for pressure injuries, severity (not appearance) for urticaria, and when a "weird spot" on the skin needs biopsy right now.

Then we zoom out. Instead of memorizing disconnected facts, we use this content to show you how to reorganize your studying around patterns and decision points: which lesions are benign vs premalignant vs malignant, what represents true cancer, and what the very first step is when melanoma is on the table. We also get honest about why most people avoid finding their gaps, why that avoidance is quietly capping your scores, and a practical way to make gap-finding less scary and more systematic.

If you're working hard but still feel exposed on derm and procedures, this episode will help you think different, work different, and score different.

In this episode of the Physician Assistant Exam Review Podcast, we walk through the "Do I worry?" side of derm: how to quickly sort benign vs concerning skin lesions using pattern recognition, not panic.

Instead of memorizing every lesion in isolation, you'll learn to organize them into buckets you'll actually see on exams and in clinic:

• Keratotic lesions: Actinic keratosis vs seborrheic keratosis – rough "sandpaper" vs waxy "stuck‑on," and when premalignant SCC risk should be on your radar
• Vascular lesions: Cherry angioma, infantile hemangioma, purpura, and telangiectasias – which ones are harmless dots and which should make you think platelets or systemic disease
• Benign soft tissue growths: Lipoma vs epidermal inclusion cyst – the "soft, rubbery, freely mobile" mass patterns and why the central punctum matters
• Chronic inflammatory lesions that mimic infection: Hidradenitis suppurativa – why recurrent "boils" in the axilla/groin aren't just another abscess

By the end, you'll be able to answer:

• Recurrent abscesses in the axillae or groin – what diagnosis?
• Rough, scaly, sandpaper‑like lesion on sun‑exposed skin – what diagnosis?
• Waxy, stuck‑on pigmented lesion in an older adult – what diagnosis?

If you're working hard but your scores aren't reflecting it, that's not a character flaw, it's a systems problem. We fix that inside 33 Days to Pass the PANCE, where we train how you study, how you approach questions, and how you manage yourself on exam day so your effort actually shows up as points