a journey finished

as terri posted recently, i graduated from the physician assistant program and spent the subsequent two weeks hitting the books to prepare for my board certification examination. our exam is 360 questions broken into six segments, each one-hour in duration. the questions are predominantly from the major systems of the body, including cardiology, pulmonology, gastroenterology, and a couple others and can be diagnosis, pharmacology, or other treatment modality related. walking into the exam i felt that i was about as prepared as i could be.

the examination process was quite interesting - the exams are proctored at a professional testing center. the center has very strict rules to ensure that everyone is on the up and up... in addition to providing two forms of identification, removing everything from pockets, i also was fingerprinted (electronically, thank goodness) and had my picture taken. i wonder if anyone has ever thought to make a photo album of the pics of people taken on test day... might be a humourous compilation! any time i needed to leave the test room for a scheduled break, my computer would go to a display with my picture, i would fingerprint out, and then repeat the whole process to return to the room. i think there are jails with more lax security! all in all, i managed to finish the exam in four hours, with breaks, and then the wait began.

we were instructed that results could take up to three weeks to post, but classmates that took the exam earlier in the week had their results within days. long story short, i received my results a couple days ago informing me that i have passed the physician assistant national certification examination (PANCE - it's okay to giggle, it is kinda funny) which grants me the privilege to now use the designation PA-C. it's been a long journey from when i originally started in medicine back in 1996 to now, and i can definitely say it was worth it.