PCE Exam Fail

[sinica14]

Hey guys, I'm hoping to get some advice from the community. I'm a final year student at a PT Masters program in Ontario. I wrote the PCE written exam in May, which I failed and I just found out I failed my second attempt at the written this past September. I was able to accept my first time failing as just a result of nerves and some dumb mistakes I made, but I studied really hard for this second exam in September and I genuinely feel shocked about failing it. I spent 2.5 months studying for it, poured over all of my school notes, lab manuals, past american exam that were circulating around the class, and any other resources I had. I just don't understand what's happening with me on the actual exam. I don't feel any severe anxiety, I remind myself to stay calm and carefully read the questions, I even saw a bunch of repeat questions in the September exam that were also on the May exam.

I've passed every course at school (lowest mark was a B+/high 70%), never failed anything, passed all my clinical placements with no complaints from my clinical instructors, and I've passed every practical exam on the first try. I just don't understand how I can pass my PT program with no issues, but suddenly struggle so hard on this written component that apparently first time Canadian students pass with a 90%+ success rate. I talked to one of my faculty advisors regarding my situation and she even backed me up saying she didn't think I ever showed any red flags throughout the program and that it shouldn't be an issue with knowledge and that she, too, didn't quite understand why I was struggling with the written exam.

Sorry for the rant, I'm just really feeling the pressure and frustration with back-to-back failures and I just feel like my whole PT career is in doubt before it even began. Does anyone have any sort of advice? I just don't know what the problem is and what I can do to solve it.

[Pt247]

Hi sinica14,

I just read your post and wanted to throw in my two cents. I graduated from an Ontario PT program a few years ago and there were a few people in my program that failed the written exam the first time. There were a few that also failed it the second time. Had very similar uncharacteristic background with no red flags.  All of them however passed on their third time. My one friend that this happened to went travelling in Europe for a few weeks to clear her head, and the other one I know when on a road trip across the USA. So if you’re able to afford it, I would suggest taking some time to do something fun for yourself.

Next, I found that using the US PT exam study materials extremely helpful - their practice exams are much harder than ours as they have a larger scope for their initial registration (but they also don’t have two of them!) Also reviewing lots of anatomy saved me as well!

My final advice would be to answer questions the way the Alliance wants you to answer them.  Some of the questions, all the answers seem right, and you could probably do many of the ethical scenarios in many different ways (but as you know they always want the ‘best’ answer).  But the Alliance is looking out for the public, so if in doubt, choose the answer that is the safest for the patient.

I hope that helped a bit. I know it’s probably truly scary, but you can pass this exam! I know I don’t know you personally, but you have one extra person believing in you!

[sinica14]

Hey, thanks a lot for your post and words of encouragement. This week has been a bit rough since finding out about my results and I definitely needed some positive encouragement. I'll definitely try again and maybe even enroll in a PCE exam prep course just to be safe. I talked to one of the profs at my school and she gave me an American O'Sullivan PCE prep book with tons of practice questions so hopefully that will help too. Thanks, again.

[MDwannabe02]

Lots of my class at Mac used O'Sullivan for the written (including me), and it seemed to do the job. Feel free to PM me for questions about the Clinical PCE, if you want. I did it twice and passed the second time

[Physio Exam Academy]

You can also check out http://www.physioexamacademy.com. They have some great resources both study guides and practice questions for written PCE prep. 

Also the blog has some short posts on different topics that might be helpful. 

[eafb30]

I've been told that apparently the bottom 30% of people who write the exam at a given time automatically fail, so perhaps you happened to write it the second time in a group that just scored really highly so don't lost faith !