How to Study for Primary Care/ Management Courses

Do you wonder how to best study for your primary care assessment and management (aka making a treatment plan) courses?

These courses go by different names depending on which university you’re studying at. The course we’re talking about today is the one where you learn how to use a patient’s history of present illness (HPI) plus physical exam findings to make a diagnosis and then develop a plan of care. In my program, the course was split over two quarters for the management of adult conditions. We had a separate, but a similar, course for pediatrics. Regardless of how your school sets up this content, these study techniques will be useful and can be applied to any course. 

If you’re looking for study strategies for pharmacology, make sure to check out this post and download a free study template.

Today, I’m sharing 3 different techniques to maximize your studying efforts. There is much to learn from these courses so effectively studying is super important. I used a combination of all three of the study techniques to learn the material in my primary care management courses. That being said, my hope is that by sharing these different techniques, you’ll find something that will work for you!

3 Study Techniques for Primary Care/Management Courses:

1. Thinking or flow maps
2. Disease or condition reference sheets
3. Create your own study guide based on course or lecture objectives

#1 Thinking or Flow Maps

There are so many different ways to utilize a thinking/flow map to help you learn the material. Firstly, writing out the material by hand instead of reviewing lecture slides or notes on a computer can really help you connect important concepts.

Ideas for how to use a thinking/flow map:

#1 For connecting important points for conditions within a body area. For example, as I did above, the common theme of upper extremity MSK conditions (in the central box) has branching points out to conditions I needed to learn. I then connected important learning points branching out from the various conditions.

#2 Differential Diagnosis of a symptom. For example, you could put dizziness as the central point in your thinking map. Then, you create branches out for different body systems that could be causing dizziness. So neurology, ENT, cardiology, etc. From there you could branch again to include possible diagnoses that would fall under each body system.

#3 For a specific condition. As an example, you could put pneumonia in the central box and create branches to include information on common symptoms, expected physical exam findings, what diagnostic tests should be ordered, what pathogens cause pneumonia, treatment strategies and any other important points from your lectures.

#2 Disease or Condition Reference Sheets

This technique is basically a way of writing out and synthesizing the material from your textbook or lectures. I found it so helpful to see all of the information listed in one place. For conditions with less information, you could put two similar conditions side by side so you can compare. Influenza vs the common cold for example.

For each condition, I recommend including:

Common symptoms

Expected physical exam findings

What diagnostic tests should be ordered (and expected results)

What pathogens cause the condition

Treatment strategies

You could also include the pathophysiology behind the condition, differential diagnoses, or as I did above, a summary of the step-wise approach to the treatment of asthma (or something specific to the condition).

#3 Create your own study guide based on course or lecture objectives

Every course has learning objectives, usually found in the syllabus. Even better, most lectures or learning modules will have specific learning objectives. In the event your professor does not provide study guides, you can create your own using the learning objectives for each lecture or learning module!

These study guides can be written by hand or typed out. I preferred to type them out. I would supplement my learning with either a handwritten thinking/flow map or a disease reference sheet (technique #1 and #2 above).

Here’s how to do it:

To start, transfer the learning objectives to a document. Next, using your textbook, lecture slides, or notes, write any pertinent information under the learning objective. As you can see in the above example, my learning objectives were to know the differential diagnosis for abdominal pain plus understanding the signs and symptoms, diagnostic tests, and differential diagnosis for GERD.

Summary – How to Study for Primary Care/ Management Courses

As you can see, all three of these study techniques involve re-writing and synthesizing the material presented in your textbook or lecture. Primary Care Management courses move really quickly and a ton of information is presented in a short amount of time. The material presented in these courses is the “bread and butter” of your future job as a Nurse Practitioner. I hope that at least one of these study techniques shared can help you be successful in this course.

Share below – Which of the 3 study techniques most appeals to you? Do you already use something similar or have another favorite?

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