Hey, Phoebe here! If you’re new to my website, welcome. If you’re not new, welcome back. 😊
A little bit about me: I recently graduated from PA school and will be starting my first PA position at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. During PA school, I graduated summa cum laude and was the recipient of several scholarships and awards, including the American Academy of PAs (AAPA) 2025 PA Student of the Year Award.
Note: If you’re just dying to know more, feel free to check out my biography on the PA History Society (PAHx) website.
You probably found this article because you’re trying to figure out the best way to study for PA school. If you’re staring at a mountain of lecture slides, textbook pages, and YouTube videos and wondering what actually matters, don’t worry—you’ve come to the right place.
During PA school, I created targeted study guides as a way to organize the chaos for myself. It was something I started doing in high school and continued to refine throughout college. Pretty soon, all of my classmates, as well as friends from other PA programs, were using my study guides to study for exams. Everyone who used them found them extremely tailored and helpful. Now, I’m excited to share them with you!
Table of Contents
Why HowMedWorks Study Guides Work So Well
This article explains how my guides are structured, why they’re designed this way, and how to use them to your advantage. They’re optimized to take advantage of visual memory and pattern recognition so information sticks with far less effort. Once you understand the method behind the madness, studying becomes faster, more intuitive, and far less stressful.
Think of these guides as graphically-organized, high-yield cheat sheets that will allow you to maximize both your GPA and personal life. (I did the heavy-lifting so you don’t have to.) Let’s get into it!
A Constantly Updated Resource
Firstly, these guides weren’t created once and left untouched. They’ve been:
Constantly updated with new information that shows up during didactic and clinical year
Informed by a wide variety of well-established study resources
Adjusted for very specific details and trick questions that appear over and over again
Repeatedly refined for clarity and page layout in order to maximize recall
Whenever I came across new or updated material—whether through lectures, rotations, practice questions, or exams—and noticed it wasn’t already included in my study guides, I would add it in or fine-tune the existing content. Therefore, what you’re getting is an accurate, up-to-date culmination of everything PA school throws at you, distilled into one place.
The Ultimate PA School Study Guides Compiled From Every Source
To create these study guides, I synthesized key material that I encountered all throughout PA school. Some of the study resources I used were:
Basically, everything you need is compiled in one place. Instead of jumping between textbooks, slides, and videos, these comprehensive guides consolidate all the high-yield information into a single, streamlined source, saving you time and helping you study much more efficiently.
Study Guides Designed to Work with How Your Brain Actually Learns
I know from experience that the hardest part of studying is usually just getting started, which is why I designed these guides to make that first step as easy as possible. Keep in mind that I originally made these study guides for my own learning so I created something that I would actually want to look at.
In this section, you’ll see how everything is organized in a way that works with how your brain naturally wants to process and retain information, not against it. Instead of fighting your brain’s tendencies, these guides leverage them. My goal was simple: to remove every studying obstacle I could so that you can actually focus your energy on learning instead of fighting through poorly organized content.
Topics Are Grouped Intentionally
Depending on the type of study guide (i.e. clinical medicine, EOR), I’ll either organize conditions based on anatomy or specialty. For instance, my orthopedics clinical medicine study guide starts with the shoulder and ends with the foot (i.e. superior to inferior). On the other hand, my EOR exam study guides are usually grouped by specialty because they have to cover a wider range of topics (as opposed to clinical medicine units that focus on a single medical specialty).
Within these sections, topics are then organized by subject, similarity, and common points of confusion (i.e. related conditions are placed right next to each other). This is especially important because exams often use similar-sounding answer choices to really test your knowledge. For instance, you might see rubeola versus mumps versus rubella, or you might get a question with a bunch of different heart murmurs presented all together.
Here’s an example from my orthopedics study guide comparing medial and lateral epicondylitis. By having the two related but distinct conditions side by side allows for easy comparison. This way, you can immediately identify what sets them apart and will be able to quickly pick out the correct answer on an exam.
Moreover, you’ll often notice that conditions are organized from least to most serious throughout sections and the entire guide—progressing through low-acuity, chronic, severe, and emergency. For example, in my pulmonology study guide, you’ll see conditions in the following order: acute bronchitis → restrictive lung disease → lung cancer → acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). This structure makes it easy to find any topic quickly.
Boxes Are Used on Purpose
As you’ll quickly see, everything lives inside a box, and that’s very intentional. I’ve noticed that people who tend to go into medicine have some level of photographic memory.
Think about it. We’ve all had that moment on a test when we can picture exactly where something was on the page and what color it was highlighted but can’t quite recall the exact words. (You know exactly what I’m talking about.)
I’ve found that using boxes—with one condition per box—helps leverage that visual memory, making it much easier to remember key details and compare similar conditions side by side. Ultimately, they make it easier to mentally “pull up” a section of the guide under pressure.
Now that we’ve gone over how the boxes are organized, let’s talk about what is inside those boxes. Again, each condition (e.g. medial epicondylitis, lateral epicondylitis) gets its own box, and box content typically follows this format:
Causes
Pathophysiology
Demographics
Risk factors
Symptoms (Sx)
Diagnosis (Dx)
Treatment (Tx)
Prognosis
For each of these categories, the most common or classic example is usually listed first and often highlighted, bolded, or color-coded to help it stand out. This makes it easier to recognize high-yield information quickly and prioritize what you’re most likely to encounter on exams. Take a look:
As you can see, this formatting makes it very easy to quickly tell that adhesions are the leading cause of small bowel obstruction, while cancer is the most common cause of large bowel obstruction. (We’ll talk about what the different colors and highlighting mean in the next section.) Similarly, first-line treatments (e.g. NG tube) will be listed first, whereas last-line treatments (surgery) will be mentioned last.
Something else I try to do is to keep conditions that overlap across study guides structured similarly so there’s consistency. For instance, a lot of the topics that appear in gastroenterology (didactic year) show up again in surgery (clinical year). By keeping the overlapping material and formatting consistent in both study guides, you can quickly recognize sections you already know, recall information more easily, and decide whether you want to skip over material you already know.
Color-Coding & Highlighting: Turning Visual Memory into a Superpower
Now, let’s talk about color-coding. This is where the magic happens because colors aren’t just nice to look at—they’re memory triggers. Many studies have shown that people naturally associate certain colors with different types of information, making color a powerful tool for recall.
Fun fact: People tend to associate the color green with safety and calmness and red with danger or urgency. This is why stop lights are red and go lights are green!
1. Green, Yellow & Red—Severity Level
Similar to the psychology behind traffic light colors, I’ve applied the same color code throughout my study guides to convey severity:
Green: mild; low-risk; benign; non-emergent
Yellow: moderate; intermediate-risk
Red: severe; high-risk; malignant; emergent; life-threatening; pain; red flags; absolute contraindications; black box warnings
In my Women’s Health EOR Exam Study Guide, you can see this green, yellow, and red color code being used. Here, all of the breast cancers are in red to denote malignancy. Lobular cancer in situ (LCIS) is the only one in the color orange because, even though it’s technically benign, it increases the risk of developing breast malignancy (i.e. it sits somewhere in the middle on the severity scale). Moreover, green and red are used to denote good and poor prognosis, respectively. Finally, this color code is also used for the mammogram findings.
Note: This is not to say that you have to memorize the color of everything that’s color-coded. However, it’s very helpful when you keep seeing a condition written in the same color because you’ll eventually associate the condition with that color and instantly know additional information about the condition without explicitly having to memorize more about it.
2. Blue & Red—Functional Effects
In addition to the green, yellow, and red color-coding, I frequently use the colors blue and red in opposition to indicate functional polarity:
Blue
Red
Low (e.g. hypocalcemia, hypoactivity)
High (e.g. hypercalcemia; hyperactivity)
Viral (e.g. lymphocytes)
Bacterial (e.g. neutrophils)
Nerve (e.g. foot drop)
Muscle (e.g. rhabdomyolysis)
Inhibitory (e.g. depressants, botulism)
Excitatory (e.g. stimulants, tetanus)
In this example, the blue and red color code is used to denote depressive and stimulatory effects. Buprenorphine and methadone are shown in blue because they are opioids, which are depressants. Even though they’re not true stimulants, naloxone and naltrexone are in red because they oppose the inhibitory effects of opioids. Suboxone is shown in purple because it’s a combination of buprenorphine (opioid; blue) and naloxone (opioid antagonist; red).
3. Blue & Pink—Demographics
Blue and pink are also used throughout the guides to indicate biological sex. (Call it old-school, but it works.) Blue indicates male-predominant conditions, such as pediatric GI issues, while pink is used for female-predominant conditions, like anxiety disorders.
Note: Pregnancy-related topics are also shown in pink.
On exams, you may not remember every statistic, but you will remember that an entire section was mostly one color, and your brain will instinctively recall the demographic association. That’s the point.
You may recall a little something about Gram stains from college microbiology. To quickly refresh: Gram-positive bacteria stain purple, while Gram-negatives stain pink. Accordingly, purple is used for Gram-positive bacteria, while pink is used for Gram-negative bacteria.
Similarly, antibiotics are color-coded based on their coverage (i.e. Those that target only Gram-positive bacteria are purple, those that target only Gram-negative bacteria are pink, and antibiotics that cover both are shown in a mix of the two colors.). Here’s an example:
This color code is evident throughout my infectious disease study guide.N. gonorrhoeae and C. trachomatis are both Gram-negative organisms so they are labeled in pink. Ceftriaxone, doxycycline and azithromycin have both Gram-positive and Gram-negative coverage so they are purple and pink. Gentamicin predominately covers Gram-negative bacteria so it’s pink.
5. Orange & Blue—Acid–Base
This color code mirrors the pH indicators you probably used at some point in undergrad chemistry:
Orange: acidic; hyponatremia; hyperkalemia
Blue: alkaline/basic; hypernatremia; hypokalemia
As you can see above, I’ve also included some electrolyte disturbances. Though not absolute by any means, hyponatremic and hyperkalemic states tend to be associated more often with metabolic acidosis, which is why they’re orange. On the flip side, hypernatremic and hypokalemic states are usually associated with metabolic alkalosis, which is why they’re blue.
Fun fact: “Basic” and “alkaline” mean pretty much the same thing (i.e. pH greater than 7), but “alkaline” is used for solutions, while “basic” refers to the chemical property itself.
In biology and medicine, you’ll probably hear “alkaline” more often than “basic” because we’re usually talking about bodily fluids or solutions.
6. Yellow Highlights—Must-Know Information
Yellow highlights are used to mark must-know facts, key differentiators, and information that keeps appearing on exams (even if it seems lower-yield). If something is highlighted in yellow, assume it has been tested repeatedly. No matter how niche or specific, it’s something you need to know.
7. Other Colors—Real-Life Color Associations
Some things are just colored the way they appear in real life. For instance:
Purpura → dark red/purple
Blueberry muffin rash → blue
Bile (gallbladder) → green
This taps into visual realism, which strengthens recall.
Other Study Features
Relevant diagrams and images to reinforce written material
Extra margin space so you have space for your own notes
Concise length that makes repeated review realistic and efficient
A layered learning design so you focus on essentials first and details after
Why Are HowMedWorks Study Guides the Best?
Something I do want to mention is that every guide is well under 100 pages. A lot of study guides out there run 200, 300, even 400+ pages, which sounds comprehensive but can actually work against you. When you’re dealing with that much material, it becomes really difficult to review everything multiple times before your exam, and repetition is key.
Additionally, many of those longer resources rely on uniform table-based layouts, where large amounts of information are included in identical-looking boxes on every page. When a study guide is hundreds of pages long, and everything looks the same, it becomes much harder for your brain to form visual landmarks or “mental snapshots,” which makes you lose your visual memory advantage and ultimately limits recall when it’s test-taking time.
With a concise guide, you can realistically read through the entire thing three, four, even five times in the same amount of time it would take to get through one of those massive guides once. This repeated exposure is what actually makes information stick.
Plus, when everything is streamlined and focused on what you actually need to know, you’re not wasting mental energy sorting through filler and poor formatting (which kind of defeats the purpose of using a study guide in the first place). No more dealing with obvious, unhelpful details (e.g. listing fatigue and malaise for nearly every condition) that not only don’t add any real study value but also increase page counts by tens or even hundreds of pages.
Current Available HowMedWorks Study Guides
Here are all of my currently available PA school study guides:
Overall, HowMedWorks study guides were my primary study resource during PA school. Collectively, they represent hundreds of hours of careful refinement and intentional design. These were what I relied on when studying, and I still continue to reference them to this day when I need to look something up.
My goal is simple: to help you study smarter (not longer), reduce stress, and walk into exams feeling confident. These guides are designed to take the overwhelm out of PA school by organizing high-yield information in a way that actually sticks so you can get the most out of every minute you spend studying.
Side note: Having these guides at hand also gives me peace of mind for recertification, since I won’t have to start from scratch or scramble to find reliable resources later on.
Knowing that these study guides have supported so many other PA students makes all the effort worthwhile—I hope you find them incredibly helpful as well. Good luck and, as always, stay healthy and keep learning. You’ve got this! 💪
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on the PA History Society (PAHx) website.
starts with the shoulder and ends with the foot (i.e. superior to inferior). On the other hand, my EOR exam study guides are usually grouped by specialty because they have to cover a wider range of topics (as opposed to clinical medicine units that focus on a single medical specialty).
