Emergency Medicine CAQ Review for Physician Assistants Paperback – 12 June 2015

Read this book thoroughly, answer all the questions, take notes, make some flash cards of difficult to remember concepts and you’ll pass your CAQ-EM easily. This book is beautifully and elegantly written for the PA with years of ER experience under her belt. Don’t waste your money on expensive review courses and apps (looking at you, Rosh), this is all you need.

seems pretty good, won't know if I passed for another month or two.

Highlights the bare basics, but disappointed in consistent lack of educational review in answer explanations. Example: question gives a trauma patient with blood loss scenario and asks for estimated percentage of blood loss. In the answer it refers to Class 1-4 hemorrhage loss and briefly associates the percentage lost with class 1 and 4 without reviewing criteria for classification. Class 2 and 3 not mentioned or reviewed. I found Rosh review to be a better mode for review by reading the answer recap in addition to just answering questions.

This book gives a random smattering of facts that largely miss the core concepts needed to understand for the conditions they're describing. Its seems as if it was not written by experts but rather relatively inexperienced PAs who pick and choose from the notes they've had over the years to try to get to a more distilled version, but unfortunately they really missed the mark. Whats worse, some of the things in the book are just flat out wrong. For example, after I gave up reading through the core content with how bad it was, I tried to do some questions at the end of the book...question 9 - patient with aortic dissection, what's the appropriate imaging test: their answer: TEE (not CT chest).question 10 explanation "cherry red spot in macula is found in central retinal *vein* occlusion (incorrect - its CRAO). Question 7 has the phrasing "what is the 'gold standard' for treatment of condition XYZ?" The phrase "gold standard" refers to testing and diagnostics, not treatment.These are amateur errors in my mind and reflect poorly on the PA profession at large. I'd be horrified of what my EM attendings would think of my education if they perused through this book as a reflection of what we think is important to know.

powerhouse for the ED CAQ. Highly recommended