What's new
Updates and improvements
Everything we've shipped to BoardPal, newest first.
Sep 1 to 7 · 18 fixes
7Sep · Mon
Fifty-five surgery-preparation questions now read like the board exam
Fixed- Fixed
One fasting question keyed black coffee taken two and a half hours before surgery as a rule breach, while the guideline it cited allows clear liquids up to two hours before. It now tests the intervals themselves.
- Fixed
A liver-and-bile-duct question about preparing for an ERCP keyed fasting from midnight and called clear liquids two hours before a breach. Rebuilt on the guideline: nothing solid for six hours, clear liquids to two hours, and someone else drives you home after sedation.
Six student reports, six questions repaired
Fixed- Fixed
The walker-after-hip-repair question no longer has two right answers, and its explanation states the full walker-first sequence. more ▾less ▴
A question on walking with a walker after a hip repair had two right answers. One choice described advancing the walker and then stepping in with the operated leg, which is exactly the sequence that is taught, yet it was marked wrong and its explanation blamed a fault the choice never had. That choice now describes the reverse order, stepping first and dragging the walker up afterwards, which every reference calls unsafe, and the explanation spells out the full sequence: walker first, then the operated leg, then the stronger leg. If you picked the taught sequence before today, your recorded answer stays as it was, since we never regrade past attempts, but the question will not trip anyone that way again.
- Fixed
The rickets, pre-operative hair removal and Buck's traction explanations now argue the right point. more ▾less ▴
Three explanations argued the wrong point and were rewritten after student reports. The rickets question about a six-month-old said starting solids would be premature, when six months is exactly when complementary foods begin; it now says the solids are on time and fail only because first foods carry very little vitamin D. The pre-operative hair question convicted the leave-the-hair choice with the razor's fault; it now gives that choice its own reason, that hair is left alone unless it would get in the way of the field, the skin marking, the sutures or the dressing, and says plainly that hair itself does not raise the infection risk. The Buck's traction question, where a student fairly asked whether moving the bed counts as tampering with traction, now lists what the nurse leaves alone (the weights, the rope, the knots, the pulley and the amount of weight) and what goes to the surgeon.
- Fixed
6Sep · Sun
A tidier Leaderboard
Fixed- Fixed
Ranking rows fit a phone without cutting names short. more ▾less ▴
On phones the ranking rows now stack the two numbers on the right, so a display name gets room instead of being cut to a few letters.
Forty-four nutrition questions now read like the board exam
Fixed- Fixed
One dumping-syndrome question taught that lying down after meals is a late-dumping measure. It is an early-dumping measure, and the question now says so.
Home, Flashcards, Practice and Resources share one look
Fixed- Fixed
The sample plan on Home fills its card evenly. more ▾less ▴
The sample plan on the free Home page no longer leaves a blank stretch on the right. On a computer the sample sits on the left and the explanation and button sit beside it; on a phone they stack.
Foundations button fits again; Everything toggles off
Fixed- Fixed
Exam section buttons sit in two even rows so the Foundations label fits. more ▾less ▴
The exam section buttons now sit in two even rows: Everything and Foundations share the first, NP1 to NP5 share the second. In the six-across row from earlier today the word Foundations was wider than its button on some screens and spilled past the edge. Same fix on the plan setup card and in the Exam sections button on the Schedule page.
Section-only plans can now be as short as 5 days
Fixed- Fixed
A plan covering only some exam sections can be as short as five days, with a lighter per-topic minimum under two weeks. more ▾less ▴
If your plan covers only some exam sections, for example Day 2 only, it can now be built or rebuilt over as few as five days. Until today a Day 2 only plan needed at least seven, which turned away exactly the students it was made for: if your Day 2 sitting is on September 11 or 12, the Sections button said your exam was too close and left you on a plan that kept scheduling NP1 to NP3. Plans shorter than two weeks now also use a lighter minimum per topic, five questions instead of ten, so a Day 2 only plan over five or six days lands around two and three quarter hours a day at the default study time rather than five. Every topic in your chosen sections still appears, deeper wherever your daily time allows, and the Schedule page still tells you plainly when a window is tighter than your chosen time. A plan covering everything keeps its fourteen day minimum.
- Fixed
4Sep · Fri
39 surgery classification questions read like the exam
Fixed- Fixed
The gastrostomy question no longer relies on a surgery class that no textbook lists; it asks what the procedure name means. more ▾less ▴
The gastrostomy question used to label the operation supportive care, a purpose class that no nursing text we could find actually lists. It now asks only what the procedure name says the surgeon will do, and every choice sits on the word endings a nurse reads: -ectomy, -ostomy, -otomy and -plasty. The correct answer letter is unchanged.
New Nurse Law cram sheet; three sheets rebuilt
Fixed- Fixed
The question about the seventeen-year-old mother now follows Philippine law: she consents for her infant, but her own family planning still needs a parent. more ▾less ▴
One question changed with it. The item about a seventeen-year-old mother who supports herself asked who may consent to her own care, and its explanation treated her as an emancipated minor, a category that exists in United States law and not in ours. In the Philippines a person comes of age only at eighteen, and a marriage under eighteen has been void since 2021. The question now asks about her own family planning, and the correct answer is that she consents for her infant as its parent while her own family planning still needs a parent's or guardian's written consent, because the Supreme Court struck the law's exception for minor parents in 2014. The answer letter did not change, so past attempts keep their score.
- Fixed
3Sep · Thu
218 explanations rewritten; one answer changed
Fixed- Fixed
The PhilHealth membership question about the market vendor is now answered individually paying member, because indigent status needs an official assessment, not just a low income. more ▾less ▴
One answer has changed. The question about Aling Norma, the market vendor with no employer and irregular income, asked which PhilHealth membership category she belongs to, and it was marked as indigent or sponsored. That is not what the law says. Under the Universal Health Care Act a person only sits in the government paid category once they have actually been assessed and listed as poor, through the DSWD listing, a 4Ps record, or an assessment by a social worker, and nothing in her situation says any of that happened. Earning little does not by itself put anyone in that category. She is a self earning member who carries her own premium, which the app calls an individually paying member, and the correct answer is now that one. Two other things in the app already agreed: a twin question about a tricycle driver with the same profile is answered self earning, and the last question in Aling Norma's own set says her payments have been on and off, which only makes sense if she is the one paying them. Your past attempts keep the score they were given. Only new attempts are marked against the corrected answer.
14 liver questions now argue the close call
Fixed- Fixed
Two questions and two flashcards blamed a large protein meal for tipping a client with liver disease into confusion. The guidelines do not list a meal as a trigger, so all four now name a real one. more ▾less ▴
Two questions and two flashcards presented a big protein meal as the thing that tips a client with liver disease into confusion. We checked it against the guidelines and it does not hold up. The recognised triggers are infection, bleeding in the gut, too much diuretic, an electrolyte problem and constipation; a meal is not on any of those lists, and its absence is deliberate rather than an oversight. Leaving it in would have taught the trigger version of the rule we retired this morning, which is a short step from cutting protein. All four now name a real trigger instead. One thing was deliberately kept: bleeding into the gut genuinely is a protein load, and an odd one, because blood is missing an amino acid the body needs; that teaching is correct and stays. Nobody reported any of these four. They came out of a sweep of every question, flashcard and cram sheet for the same idea, run after the first one turned up.
427 more explanations now say why wrong choices fail
Fixed- Fixed
One hundred and twenty-eight questions were carrying the wording we remove in a form none of our checks could find. All of them have now been rewritten. more ▾less ▴
We also went looking for the ones our own checks could not see, and fixed them. Every sweep so far has found questions by matching a list of phrases, which means a question could carry exactly the wording we were removing in a form the list did not cover and stay untouched while every check reported itself clean. We measured that gap and it was real: one hundred and twenty-eight questions across sixty-two topics were carrying words like tempting, runner-up or distractor where no sweep could ever have selected them. Some had already been through an earlier rewrite and kept the wording because it was invisible to us at the time. All one hundred and twenty-eight have now been rewritten, which is why this is the last of them rather than a promise. Ninety-six of those questions used the word tempting, and on forty-five of them that word was doing the work of explaining the wrong choice, so each of those needed a real clinical reason written in its place rather than a word deleted. While checking, we also found three words on our internal list that we deliberately left alone, because reading the questions showed they were ordinary clinical language and not exam commentary: trapping air, trapping ammonia and the Wolff-Chaikoff trap are nursing, not jargon about answering questions.
Protein in liver encephalopathy: an outdated rule fixed
Fixed- Fixed
Three questions taught that protein is cut once liver encephalopathy develops. Current guidelines say the opposite, so all three are corrected and the explanation now names the old rule and says why it was retired. more ▾less ▴
Three questions in the bank told you that once a client with liver disease develops encephalopathy, protein is cut back. That is the rule most Philippine review books still print, and it is the rule we were taught. It is not what the guidelines say any more. We checked it against the joint European and American liver guideline, the European nutrition guideline for liver disease, the American college's 2025 guideline and the current StatPearls chapter, and all four say the same thing: protein is not restricted in hepatic encephalopathy, not even during an acute episode. The target is about 1.2 to 1.5 grams per kilogram a day. The old rule was dropped after a 2004 trial found that cutting protein gave no benefit at all and actually increased protein breakdown, and because the muscle loss it causes is itself one of the things that makes encephalopathy worse and more likely to come back. One of the three had the retired rule inside its correct answer, so that answer has been rewritten; the answer letter did not change on any of them. Because so many of you will have been taught the old rule and would think we had made a mistake, the explanation now says the old rule out loud and says when and why it was retired, instead of quietly stating the new one. Plant and dairy protein are still preferred over red meat. Two of the three questions were not reported by anyone: we found them by sweeping the whole bank, the flashcards, the situations and the cram sheets for the same claim after the first one turned up.
45 questions no longer hint at their answer
Fixed- Fixed
Forty-five questions whose correct choice alone carried a note in parentheses, such as a drug's second name or an acronym, no longer give themselves away; answer keys unchanged. more ▾less ▴
Forty-five practice questions had one thing in common: the correct choice was the only one carrying a note in parentheses, such as a second name for a drug, an acronym, or a short explanation of the term. Some of you told us the same thing about a few flashcards last month, and you were right: a reader who spots the pattern can pick the answer without knowing the nursing. We measured it across the whole bank and found the pattern on forty-five questions in thirty-three subtopics, with about six thousand seven hundred recorded answers between them. In forty of them the note was simply removed from the correct choice, so "Vitamin K (phytonadione)" now reads "Vitamin K" and "Electroencephalogram (EEG)" reads "Electroencephalogram". In four, the note was reworded into plain words so the choice stays about as long as its neighbors, and on the Rh incompatibility question the drug is now called anti-D immune globulin, the same medicine under its name without parentheses. The second names and acronyms still appear in the explanations, where they teach rather than tell. Questions, wrong choices, answer keys and explanations are otherwise unchanged, so every result you have already recorded still stands. No question in the bank now has a note in parentheses on its correct choice alone.
An IMCI question on feeding counseling, clarified
Fixed- Fixed
An IMCI feeding-counseling question whose explanation admitted the question was ambiguous now gives the WHO booklet's own reason instead; question, choices and answer letter unchanged. more ▾less ▴
A question in the maternal and child health programs topic asks why a sick 14-month-old who is under weight and still mostly breastfed gets feeding counseling at her visit. Its explanation opened by admitting that the question did not say which kind of reason it wanted, so more than one answer could be argued. An explanation should never leave you with that. We went back to the WHO IMCI chart booklet and the WHO training module on counseling the mother, and the answer is not ambiguous at all: IMCI puts feeding counseling into the sick-child visit because good feeding after illness makes up for weight loss and helps prevent malnutrition, and good feeding when the child is well helps prevent the next illness, which is why the chart has the nurse assess feeding for every child under two and for any child with acute malnutrition or anaemia. The explanation now says that, in the booklet's own terms. The wrong choice that sounded most procedural, that feeding problems are something the booklet classifies, is now answered precisely: the booklet classifies nutritional status and anaemia, and feeding is assessed and counseled as a treatment step under that classification, with a return visit in seven days if a feeding problem is found. The question, the four choices and the answer letter did not change, so any result you already recorded still stands. Nobody reported this one; it was found while reading through a list of explanations that used the word arguable.
Your reports fixed 3 questions, 3 cards and a cram page
Fixed- Fixed
The DOH vision and mission on page 5 of the PH Health System cram sheet were out of date and now match the 2025 statements; marked-up copies stay one tap away behind the clock icon. more ▾less ▴
The Department of Health has a new vision and mission, and page 5 of the PH Health System, UHC and Primary Health Care cram sheet was still printing statements from before 2017. The page now carries the current wording, checked against the DOH Citizen's Charter 2025: the vision that Filipinos are among the healthiest people in Asia by 2040, and the mission to promote healthy settings and steer the development of an effective, resilient, equitable and people-centered health system for Universal Health Care. The earlier wording that many review handouts still teach is kept underneath as a note, so you can recognize either version if it appears, and the source was added to the reference list on page 18. Nothing else on the sheet moved. If you had marked up the previous edition, your highlights and notes are safe on that edition, one tap away behind the clock icon in the top bar. The practice question on the DOH vision was updated to the same wording.
- Fixed
The chain of infection question now asks which link each organism occupies, and the informed consent choice now reads the way the Mental Health Act does; answer keys unchanged. more ▾less ▴
Three practice questions were revised after student reports. The chain of infection question about dengue, tuberculosis and hookworm used to ask which link the three organisms share, which sent many of you looking for something they have in common; it now asks directly which link of the chain each organism occupies, and its explanation was reworded to match. The informed consent question under the Mental Health Act had an awkwardly worded choice, which now reads the way the law itself does: full disclosure in plain language, and consent given voluntarily. Answer keys are unchanged, so every result you have already recorded still stands.
- Fixed
The IMCI severe jaundice card now says either finding alone classifies the infant pink, and two fetal monitoring cards no longer give away their answer. more ▾less ▴
Three flashcards were corrected. The IMCI card on severe jaundice in a young infant listed its two findings joined by and, as though both were needed. The chart classifies the infant pink when either one is present on its own, jaundice under 24 hours of age or yellow palms and soles at any age, and the card now says so, with the 14-day referral rule added on the back. Two fetal monitoring cards gave away their own answers by printing the last word of the term after the blank; the blank now covers the whole term, and the late deceleration card names the pattern and asks for its cause.
- Fixed
2Sep · Wed
220 more explanations rewritten; repeats removed
Fixed- Fixed
Ninety-three explanations no longer repeat the same sentence for two different choices; each choice now gets its own reason. Answer keys unchanged. more ▾less ▴
Ninety-three explanations across forty-six subtopics said the same sentence twice, usually because two different wrong choices had been given one identical reason, copied word for word. Each repeated sentence, one hundred and thirty-six in all, was replaced with a reason true of that particular choice. Because this rewrite added new clinical statements rather than removing words, every item was read by reviewers who had not written it, and the one new statement they found to be wrong, about neck vein distention in pulmonary edema, was corrected before going live. One further question was held back on purpose because its replacement wording needs a closer review, so it keeps its repeated sentence for now. Questions, choices and answer keys are unchanged.
The word beta no longer appears on pages where it no longer applies
Fixed- Fixed
The word beta is gone from the dashboard, Profile and Schedule pages, and the sold out Beta card on Plans now shows only to the students who hold that pass. more ▾less ▴
Our founding beta closed once its seats ran out, but six places in the app still spoke as though it were running. The community card on your dashboard invited you to study alongside the other beta reviewers, your Profile page said your Telegram handle was only used to reach you about your beta access, the free plan note under Daily flashcard goal said beta let you set your own goal, and the popup on a locked study plan said the scheduler was part of BoardPal Beta. Those all now say full access, or simply drop the word. On the Plans page, the gold Beta card marked Sold out used to greet everyone, sitting above the plans that are actually open and showing a lower price nobody could buy any more. It is now shown only to the students who hold that founding pass, where it reads as their plan. Everyone else lands straight on the plans they can choose from. Nothing about anyone's access, price or expiry date changed.
- Fixed