What's new
What's new in August 2026
Everything we shipped to BoardPal in August 2026.
Aug 8 to 14 · 22 improvements
14Aug · Fri
New Hematology and Oncology sheet, plus report fixes
Improved- Improved
104 more explanations rewritten for clarity. No answer keys changed. more ▾less ▴
Explanations on 104 more questions were rewritten to be easier to read. Each one now opens by saying plainly why the correct answer is correct, then takes the other three options one at a time, so you can find the sentence that answers your own doubt instead of reading a whole paragraph to reach it. No correct answers, questions or answer choices changed, so every result you have already recorded still stands.
- Improved
Explanations no longer argue against the answer they are defending. more ▾less ▴
Several explanations were rewritten where they argued against their own answer. One said a statement was correct as written and then spent a paragraph on what was unusual about it, which read as though it might be wrong after all; each option is now labeled plainly as accurate or as the one needing correction. A tuberculosis question that asked a nurse to review a plan against DOTS now asks plainly whether each part of the plan follows DOTS, since against could be read as the plan opposing it.
Re-read finished decks, honest question counts, steadier mock clock
Improved- Improved
Resumed practice sets now say they are resumed, with a fresh-set option. more ▾less ▴
If you come back to an unfinished practice set, the session now says so at the top — with how far you got and a one-tap link to start a fresh set instead of silently reopening the old one.
- Improved
13Aug · Thu
Clearer explanations on 102 practice questions
Improved- Improved
Explanations on 102 practice questions now teach the reasoning, not just the answer. more ▾less ▴
We rewrote the explanations on 102 practice questions so they read like a teacher talking you through the answer instead of a summary of it. Each one now says plainly why the correct answer is correct, then takes the other three options one at a time and explains what makes each one wrong. The questions themselves are untouched, the answers are unchanged, and every result you have already recorded still stands.
- Improved
Explanations no longer lean on reviewer shorthand. more ▾less ▴
Where an explanation leaned on a phrase only a reviewer would use, such as calling one option the most tempting of the wrong answers, we replaced it with the actual clinical reason. You should not have to decode an explanation in order to learn from it.
Feeding after pyloric stenosis surgery now agrees
Improved- Improved
On a 12 month language question, the explanation for the option offering four to six words used to just say it overstated the milestone. It now says what is actually wrong with it, which is the word minimum. Four to six overlaps the top of the range the textbooks describe, so the count is not the problem; treating any count as a floor a baby must clear is.
- Improved
12Aug · Wed
Three community health topics rewritten
Improved- Improved
Three community health topics rewritten, with explanations that name your near miss. more ▾less ▴
Three topics have been rewritten: the health financing and insurance laws, the maternal, child and reproductive health laws, and health education and research use in community health nursing. Ninety seven questions in all. Every explanation now names the option you were most likely torn between and says exactly what separates it from the right answer, instead of just telling you the right answer was right.
- Improved
Removed 23 repeated questions from the health financing laws. more ▾less ▴
The health financing law topic was padded and is now much tighter. Forty five questions between them had only fourteen different answers, and one law was the answer to ten of them. Five separate questions asked which law taxed cigarettes and alcohol to fund PhilHealth. Twenty three of those repeats have been removed. The twenty two that remain each teach something the others do not, so a good score there now means you know the laws rather than that you spotted the pattern.
- Improved
Early childhood care questions now say plainly which law replaced the old one. more ▾less ▴
Four questions about early childhood care were answering with a law that was repealed back in 2013. Review centres still teach it, so the questions have been kept and now ask which law first set the system up, and each explanation says plainly that a newer law replaced it in 2013 and changed the age brackets. You get the answer your reviewer expects and the current position at the same time.
Normal Pregnancy rebuilt; four explanations corrected
Improved- Improved
Normal Pregnancy rebuilt, with explanations that name the option you were torn between. more ▾less ▴
The Normal Pregnancy topic has been rebuilt to the tighter standard the rest of the bank is moving to. All 90 questions now put the difficulty in the choices rather than in the wording, so you have to reason your way to the answer instead of spotting the odd one out, and every explanation names the option you were most likely torn between and says exactly what separates it from the right one.
- Improved
Shorter scenarios, and more of the which is not correct format. more ▾less ▴
The questions in that topic are also shorter and more varied. The scenarios used to run past 60 words on average and the longest was 93. They now sit under 50, with the storytelling trimmed away and every clinical detail kept, so nothing that decides the answer has gone. More of them are now the kind that asks which statement is not correct, a format the board uses often and this topic barely had before.
New Professional Adjustment topic, bigger free sheet
Improved- Improved
The free cram sheet is now 15 pages and covers IV fluids, tonicity and IV site problems. more ▾less ▴
The free cram sheet has grown from 11 pages to 15, and it is now called Labs, Fluids and Electrolytes. The new part is about intravenous fluids: what each kind of bag does to a cell, when an isotonic, hypotonic or hypertonic solution is the right choice and when it is dangerous, and a table of the bag names you will actually meet on a Philippine ward, including PNSS, PLRS, D5NSS, D5IMB and D5NM. It also covers fluid volume deficit against fluid volume excess, what daily weight and urine output are really telling you, and the six things that go wrong at an intravenous site, including the difference between an infiltration, which is cool and pale, and a phlebitis, which is warm and red.
- Improved
A new closing section on why a lab result can be wrong before it reaches the chart. more ▾less ▴
That same sheet now closes with a section on when a laboratory value is wrong before it ever reaches the chart: blood drawn above a running intravenous line, a tourniquet left on too long, a hemolyzed specimen, the order the tubes are filled in, timing and transport, and what a bedside glucometer can and cannot tell you. It is the answer to a potassium of 6.2 in a patient who looks completely well.
- Improved
Marks made on the earlier version of the free sheet are safe, behind the history icon. more ▾less ▴
If you had highlighted or written notes on that sheet before today, none of it has been deleted. Your marks stay on the version you drew them on, exactly where you left them, and you can open that version at any time using the history icon in the reader toolbar. We have also messaged everyone this affects directly.
- Improved
Eight questions rewritten after student reports. No scores or answer keys changed. more ▾less ▴
Eight practice questions have been rewritten after students reported them, and in most cases the report was right about the question rather than about the answer. Some carried an option whose wording contradicted the explanation printed underneath it. One described a finding in the scenario and then argued that the finding was not there. One asked you to judge whether a method suited a client without giving you the history you needed to decide. Your answers and your scores are untouched, and not one answer key changed.
- Improved
Those questions now name the most tempting wrong option and explain it properly. more ▾less ▴
Those same eight now explain themselves better — each one names the wrong option that was most tempting and says plainly what it gets right before saying where it falls short, instead of leaving you to work out why the choice you made was not the one being asked for.
- Improved
The Growth and Development sheet now calls school-age play competitive as well as cooperative. more ▾less ▴
On the Growth and Development cram sheet, the school-age row of the play table now describes that play as organized, with rules, roles and a goal, and increasingly competitive. A new line in the pairs-that-get-swapped table at the back explains why both words are right: Parten's stages stop at cooperative, so competitive describes school-age play rather than naming a further stage. A student asked about this, so thank you. Any notes you have made on that sheet are exactly where you left them.
- Improved
The new topic appears in Practice and Performance, and in study plans built from today. more ▾less ▴
You will find the new topic under Foundations and Fundamentals in Practice, in Performance, and in the topic list. If you build a new study plan from today it will include the topic. Study plans you already have are unchanged, so nothing you have already scheduled moves or disappears.
- Improved
11Aug · Tue
Weak spots days in your study plan
Improved- Improved
Plan mistake days now end with a drill of fresh questions from your weakest topics. more ▾less ▴
The recurring mistake-review days in your study plan are now Weak Spots days: clear your Vault mistakes first, then a new button takes you straight into fresh questions from your weakest topics. Redoing a miss teaches you the item; a new question on the same topic proves you closed the gap. Plans built earlier keep their old task name and get the new button all the same.
A cleaner Home dashboard
Improved- Improved
One weak-spots card on Home, with the drill button on it. more ▾less ▴
Home now has one Your Weak Spots card that names the exact topics you miss most, with the drill button right on it. Before, the page warned you about the same weak subject in four different places and only one of them had a button.
- Improved
Whole-plan progress on Today's Plan, and a shorter page. more ▾less ▴
Today's Plan now also shows your progress across the whole plan, not just today, and the page got shorter: repeated links, repeated text, and a card that duplicated the top menu were removed.
Care of population groups rebuilt, and 14 repeated questions retired
Improved- Improved
Care of population groups rebuilt, with explanations that name the choice you were torn between. more ▾less ▴
The community health topic Care of Population Groups with Other Health Priorities has been rebuilt to the tighter standard the rest of the bank is moving to. Every option is now plausible enough that you have to reason rather than spot the odd one out, and the explanation afterwards names the choice you were most likely torn between and says exactly what separates it from the right answer. Before today, 37 of the 40 questions in this topic gave you nothing if you narrowed it down to two and picked the wrong one.
- Improved
Fourteen repeated questions retired from that topic. more ▾less ▴
Fourteen questions in that topic have been retired because they were asking the same handful of facts over and over, or were asking something another topic already owns and tests better. Nothing you need to know has gone: every fact they covered is still taught by a question that stayed. The topic is smaller and repeats less.
Submit answer will not go dead on you any more
Improved- Improved
An answer that fails to save now tells you so. more ▾less ▴
If an answer ever fails to save for any other reason, you will now be told, instead of being left tapping a button that looks broken. The message says your answer did not save and invites you to try again or move on and come back.
Your projected rating now appears when you finish practising
Improved- Improved
Practice results now lead with your percentage. more ▾less ▴
Finish a practice set and the big number on the results screen is now your percentage, with the raw count underneath it. Before, the score was shown as 14 out of 20 in large type and the 70 percent sat under it in small grey text, which was easy to miss.
- Improved
The same rating appears when you reopen a past session from your History, and at the end of a Vault run. This was a student suggestion, so thank you.
Your Vault no longer stops at 20 questions
Improved- Improved
Choose 20, 30 or 50 questions per Vault run. more ▾less ▴
The Vault used to hand out 20 questions per run and there was no way to ask for more. You can now pick 20, 30 or 50 on the Vault screen before you start, and the size you pick is remembered for the rest of the session.
- Improved
Keep going straight into the next Vault set. more ▾less ▴
Finish a Vault run and there is now a Keep going button that drops you straight into the next set. If your pile is large you no longer have to walk back to the Vault screen and press Start over and over.
New Renal cram sheet; select-all explanations rewritten
Improved- Improved
400 more select-all questions now explain every statement. more ▾less ▴
Another 400 select-all-that-apply questions now explain every numbered statement one at a time, marked Correct or Wrong with its own reason. That brings the total to 800 of 1,291, and it covers essentially every select-all question students actually open.
- Improved
Every select-all question in the bank now explains each statement. more ▾less ▴
Another 489 followed on the same day, which finishes the job: every select-all-that-apply question in the bank now explains each numbered statement on its own line. That is 1,289 of them. The only two left out are questions whose wording lists no numbered statements to explain.
- Improved
Many of these were only half converted before: the correct statements had their own lines and the wrong ones stayed buried inside the answer-choice paragraphs. Those now get the same treatment, so the statement you got wrong is the one you can actually look up.
- Improved
Exam-writer wording is gone from these explanations. Phrases like "the closest competitor" and "the nearest miss" described how the question was built rather than the nursing, and they have been replaced with the clinical reason a statement is true or false.
- Improved
Where an explanation depends on a lab value, the normal range now stays with it, so you can check the number without leaving the question.
- Improved
The Critical Care cram sheet is rebuilt and seven pages longer. more ▾less ▴
The Critical Care and Emergency Nursing cram sheet has been rebuilt. It now uses the same layout as the other rebuilt sheets, with a bold label on every block so you can scan for what you need instead of reading through paragraphs, and it has grown from 28 pages to 35.
- Improved
If you had highlights or notes on the old Critical Care sheet, none of them were deleted. Because every page was re-typeset, your marks may now sit over different words, so open the sheet and tap the clock icon in the top bar to read the previous edition with everything exactly where you drew it.
- Improved
The Antepartum cram sheet is rebuilt and seven pages longer. more ▾less ▴
The Antepartum cram sheet has been rebuilt the same way, with a bold label on every block so you can scan for what you need instead of reading through paragraphs, and it has grown from 19 pages to 26.
- Improved
The same applies to your marks on the Antepartum sheet. Nothing was deleted, and the clock icon in the top bar shows the previous edition with your highlights and notes exactly where you drew them.
- Improved
10Aug · Mon
Select-all-that-apply explanations now cover every statement
Improved- Improved
Every numbered statement now gets its own Correct or Wrong explanation. more ▾less ▴
On select-all-that-apply questions, the explanation now takes each numbered statement one at a time and marks it Correct or Wrong with its own reason, instead of grouping them under the answer choices. Before, a statement could be explained twice in two different ways, or never explained at all.
- Improved
The first 400 select-all-that-apply questions have been rewritten this way, chosen as the ones students open most. The rest of the bank follows.
- Improved
9Aug · Sun
Cram sheets and the home page load faster
Improved- Improved
Opening a cram sheet is lighter on your data: the text that powers in-sheet search now downloads only when you actually open Search, instead of arriving with every sheet.
- Improved
Your highlights, pen marks and sticky notes on a sheet now load page by page as you read, so heavily annotated sheets open just as fast as clean ones. Everything still saves and syncs exactly as before.
- Improved
The home page now loads noticeably faster for visitors.
Clearer instructions for paying by QR
Improved- Improved
Checkout now explains how to pay the QR code, including what to do when you're paying on the same phone. more ▾less ▴
Checkout now explains how to pay the QR code before it sends you off to do it: open GCash, Maya or your bank app and tap Scan QR, and if you are paying on the same phone, screenshot the code first and use Upload QR in GCash, since you cannot scan your own screen. It also notes that codes expire, so if one stops working you can just come back and start again.
Your diagnostic now tells you how sure it is
Improved- Improved
Your diagnostic subject scores now show the honest range, not just a percentage. more ▾less ▴
The By subject bars on your diagnostic results now show how wide the real answer still is. Thirty questions works out to only about six per subject, which is enough to point you in a direction but not enough to score you — so alongside the percentage you now get the honest range, and a one-tap drill for that subject. The range narrows on its own as you practice.
- Improved
Mock sections now show their score as soon as you submit them. more ▾less ▴
Every mock section now shows its score the moment you submit it. Before, a section's score stayed hidden until you had finished all five, so if you stopped partway you had nothing to show for a 100-item sitting. Your total, readiness tier, and full board breakdown still unlock at the end, just like the real board.
Your study plan now bends without breaking
Improved- Improved
A rebalance that would overload your days now offers to resize the plan instead. more ▾less ▴
If a rebalance would make your days much heavier than the daily study time you chose, BoardPal now says so before you commit, and offers to fit the plan to your time instead — same topics, fewer questions each, so the days stay doable. Rebalance only ever moved work between days; it could never make a day smaller.
- Improved
The exam-date field admits when PRC hasn't published a sitting yet. more ▾less ▴
When you build a plan for a sitting PRC hasn't scheduled yet, the exam-date field now says so instead of quietly holding a date. The February 2027 dates aren't out yet, so the field shows a clearly labelled placeholder and invites your best estimate — and since your dates are now editable, correcting it later costs you nothing.
- Improved
8Aug · Sat
Scrolling a question no longer draws on it
Improved- Improved
Clear marks stays available even after you switch the tool off. more ▾less ▴
The Clear button now stays on the tools row for as long as there is a mark on screen, instead of disappearing the moment you switch the tool off — so a mark you did not mean to make is always one tap away from gone.
- Improved
The tools row stays put, and an active tool says it is on. more ▾less ▴
The tools row is tidier and no longer rearranges itself. A tool that is on now says so in words, and its settings sit on their own line underneath instead of pushing the other buttons around.
Four cram sheets rebuilt; highlights survive updates
Improved- Improved
Four more sheets rebuilt: Intrapartum, Mental Health, Immunization, Nutrition & GI. more ▾less ▴
Intrapartum, Mental Health Concepts, Immunization MCH & Nutrition, and Nutrition & Gastrointestinal have been rebuilt the same way as the six sheets last week: scannable boxes with short WHY / DO / warning lines instead of dense paragraphs, diagram labels readable at full size, and pages of genuinely new content — Intrapartum grew from 21 pages to 27, Mental Health from 22 to 26, Immunization from 19 to 24, and Nutrition & GI from 31 to 38.
What changed in the question bank this week
Improved- Improved
More than 3,200 rationales rewritten to read more plainly. No correct answers changed. more ▾less ▴
More than 3,200 questions already in the bank had their rationales rewritten this week. The aim was to make an explanation read like an explanation: the reason the right answer is right comes first, in short sentences, and then each wrong option is taken in turn and named for what it actually is. None of the correct answers changed — only the wording around them. If a rationale you remember as dense reads more plainly now, that is why.
- Improved
Three community health subtopics rebuilt so the wrong options no longer give themselves away. more ▾less ▴
Three community health subtopics — nutrition programs, sanitation and environmental health, and the laws around nursing practice and the health workforce — were rebuilt to the tighter standard the rest of the bank is moving to, where every option is plausible enough that you have to reason rather than spot the odd one out.
- Improved