Pediatric NP board review, planned by item count

• Assessment and diagnosis, 52 items: the largest area. Growth, history and exam, tests, screening tools, differentials.
• Health maintenance and promotion, 45 items: anticipatory guidance, immunization counseling, injury prevention.
• Management, 45 items: prescribing, procedures, referral and reporting, care coordination.
• Leadership, ethics and practice management, 8 items: quality, privacy, scope, billing (details).

Every clinical question also belongs to a category. The first seven by volume are development and behavior, dermatology, allergy and immunology, otolaryngology, gastroenterology, infectious disease and pulmonology (outline, p. 4); this site has pages for development and behavior, dermatology, ENT and allergy and respiratory.

1. Week 1, starting point: sit our practice test before any review, then tally wrong answers by area and by category.
2. Weeks 2–3, well-child care: the Bright Futures visit sequence from newborn to 21, milestones by age, the immunization schedule with catch-up rules, safety counseling by stage.
3. Weeks 4–5, assessment and diagnosis: growth charts and BMI percentiles, murmurs, febrile infants by age, the named screening tools with their ages and cut points.
4. Week 6, management: weight-based prescribing, drugs restricted in children, the ten named procedures, mandated reporting and transition to adult care.
5. Week 7, top categories: development and mental health, skin, ears and allergy, then the airway.
6. Week 8, timed review: a full-length set at about one minute per question, then only the two weakest areas.

The outline lists tools and procedures by name (pp. 4–5), which makes them safe bets for study time.

Screening tools (12): ACE questionnaire, ASQ, ASQ:SE, the Ask Suicide-Screening Questions, CRAFFT, Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, GAD-7, M-CHAT-R/F, NICHQ Vanderbilt, PHQ in any version, Pediatric Symptom Checklist, SCARED. Note that "ASQ" stands for two different tools.

Procedures (10): cerumen removal, skin and body-fluid specimens, fluorescein staining, fluoride varnish, incision and drainage, nursemaid's elbow reduction, foreign body removal, suture and staple removal, umbilical cord cauterization, wart removal.

• Textbook: Burns and colleagues, Pediatric Primary Care (the 7th edition or a later one), a full textbook of the specialty; it is long, so use it to look up weak topics rather than read it cover to cover.
• Guidelines: the AAP Bright Futures guidelines and periodicity schedule, the current AAP Red Book, and the AAP clinical practice guidelines named on our section pages.
• Review courses: NAPNAP lists primary care certification review courses on napnap.org, and private companies sell others. A course also satisfies PNCB's retest condition if you need one.
• PNCB's practice module: $52 for 75 questions; it is written by the board, which makes it the best check on whether your timing and reading of stems are close to the real thing.

• Remote testing: sites that offer "take it from home" are describing other PNCB exams.
• Old outline names: material older than the current outline (effective Oct 2023) may use different area names and weights.
• Pass marks as percentages: any "70% to pass" claim ignores the scaled score (scoring).
• Codeine for cough or pain in young children, and routine bronchodilators in bronchiolitis: both were dropped by the FDA and the AAP years ago, yet still appear in older question banks.