What's new
Updates and improvements
Everything we've shipped to BoardPal, newest first.
Sep 1 to 7 · 11 new features
7Sep · Mon
Four cram sheets rebuilt in the newer layout
New- New
New sections on organizing data, kinds of planning, evaluation, priority levels and delegation. more ▾less ▴
New sections cover how illness affects the patient and the family, the interview and question types, Gordon's eleven patterns and the other ways of organizing data, the three kinds of planning and the Kardex, the five parts of evaluation and the nursing audit, the high, medium and low priority levels, and delegation against assignment and supervision with the twelve principles a nurse checks before delegating.
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New sections on the interventions for each family health task and the family APGAR. more ▾less ▴
New on that sheet: the typology's own wording for each family nursing problem, Maglaya's list of what the nurse does for each of the five family health tasks (including the written family-nurse contract, the index of community resources, and motivation and support), the names of Duvall's eight stages as searchable text, and the family APGAR, the five-question screen of how well a family functions.
- New
New sections on pharmacology basics, receptors and side effects, and psychotropics in pregnancy and old age. more ▾less ▴
New on that sheet: the pharmacology words the items use (half-life and steady state, the liver enzymes behind drug interactions, and why a smoker on clozapine needs watching on a smoke-free ward), a table of which receptor causes which side effect, the remaining antipsychotic risks (prolactin, the QT interval, heat, and tapering), and psychotropics in pregnancy, breastfeeding and old age.
- New
New sections on the global NCD targets, home blood pressure, BE FAST in Filipino, prediabetes, and a scenario-to-first-action table. more ▾less ▴
New on that sheet: the nine targets the world set for 2025 and the 2030 goal that replaced them, blood pressure outside the clinic (home readings, white-coat and masked hypertension), BE FAST in the words a Filipino family actually uses, prediabetes (who to test, and how much a 7% weight loss and 150 minutes a week actually buys), and a closing table that reads a scenario and names the first action.
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6Sep · Sun
Environmental Health cram sheet rebuilt
New- New
It adds toilet types, septage, the barangay sanitation grades, the chlorine standard and a stem drill. more ▾less ▴
New sections cover the sanitary toilet types behind the three levels, the septic tank and when it must be emptied, the DOH grades for a barangay from zero open defecation to sustainable sanitation, the chlorine level drinking water must keep, and a closing drill that matches the wording of a stem to its answer.
Exam mode and the per-question timer, now from your Study Plan
New- New
Study Plan practice tasks can now open in Exam mode, with a per-question timer, right from the task popup. more ▾less ▴
A practice-questions task on your Study Plan can now open in Exam mode. Tap the task on your Home page or on the Schedule and the popup shows Session options: Mode, where Practice shows the rationale right after each answer and Exam holds every answer and rationale until you submit the whole set, and Per-question timer, off or one minute, a minute and a half, or two per question. Plan tasks used to skip the practice setup screen, so Exam mode was never on offer there and the timer only followed you over if you had chosen it on that screen. Both choices are now right where you start the task, and BoardPal remembers them on your device for every plan task after that. Nothing changes unless you touch them: plan tasks still open in Practice mode with the timer off, and finishing the set still ticks the task off your plan either way. A student asked for exactly this.
Flashcards name their laws; shortcuts on phones
New- New
A flashcard's References now name the specific law the card cites, with a link to the statute. more ▾less ▴
Flashcards now name the law they teach. When a card cites a Republic Act, Presidential Decree or Executive Order by number, the References line under the answer shows that law's full title with a link to the statute text, instead of only the general sources for the card's topic. Questions have worked this way since late August; flashcards and the deck read-through page now match. A student's report on the First 1,000 Days card, which showed three other maternal-health laws and never named RA 11148 itself, is what surfaced the gap. Ten more laws were added to the reference list so every citation in the bank resolves, including the 1929 communicable-disease reporting law and the Civil Registry Law.
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Shortcut hints show on phones with a keyboard or controller, and Backspace steps back a question in the mock boards. more ▾less ▴
Keyboard and controller shortcuts are easier to find. The keyboard-shortcuts icon in the practice and mock toolbars used to stay hidden on phones; it now appears the moment BoardPal sees a key press from a Bluetooth keyboard or a game controller in keyboard mode. In the mock boards, Backspace or the left arrow now goes back one question, so a controller without a Back button can move both ways. The Help page FAQ explains how to set a controller up and lists every key.
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5Sep · Sat
5 student reports fixed; 2 flashcards added
New- New
Two new postpartum flashcards: the course of the blues, and the Edinburgh scale for depression. more ▾less ▴
Two flashcards were added to the Postpartum Complications deck so that each mood disorder also has its own card: one on the postpartum blues, when they appear and how long they are expected to last before they count as something more, and one on postpartum depression and the Edinburgh scale used to screen for it. Postpartum psychosis already had its own card on the priority nursing action.
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4Sep · Fri
New Nurse Law cram sheet; three sheets rebuilt
New- New
A new cram sheet on nurse law and patient rights: negligence, the torts, consent, confidentiality, the chart as evidence and the ethics items, all in Philippine law. more ▾less ▴
Nurse Law and Patient Rights is on the Foundations shelf. It is the sheet for the legal and ethics items that turn up in every part of the exam, written for Philippine law. It starts with how one careless act can become a crime, a damage suit and a case before the Board of Nursing at the same time, and what has to be proved in each. It gives you the four elements of negligence the Supreme Court requires, with the Philippine cases that carry them, including the hospital that paid because it could not show how it supervised its nurses, and the operating room where the nurses' charted sponge count put the missing gauzes on the surgeon. Then assault, battery, false imprisonment, invasion of privacy and defamation, with the law that makes holding a patient over an unpaid bill a crime. Consent gets its own part: who may decide for whom, from the emergency that needs no consent to the refusal that always stands, what the nurse's signature as a witness actually confirms, and what the 2014 Supreme Court ruling did to the rules on minors and spouses. After that, what a do-not-resuscitate order is and is not, who may be told a diagnosis under the Data Privacy Act and which reports the law compels, the chart as evidence, the incident report, telephone orders, the ethical principles as the exam writes them, and the duty to report an impaired colleague. Twenty-two pages, closing with a table that reads the stem and names the wrong.
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3Sep · Thu
30 new pregnancy questions; 54 long ones shortened
New- New
Thirty new short, direct questions in Normal Pregnancy and Complications During Pregnancy, the kind that ask one thing and expect one fact back. more ▾less ▴
Thirty new questions have been added to the two pregnancy topics, six to Normal Pregnancy and twenty-four to Complications During Pregnancy. They are short and direct: they ask you one thing and expect one fact back. That is a shape the real exam leans on far more than our bank did, and these two topics are among the most heavily practised in the whole app, so they are where it was worth starting. The facts came from a coaching workbook, but every question, every choice and every explanation was written fresh to our own standard rather than lifted. Twenty of the fifty facts we started from did not become questions at all. Seventeen were already the answer to a question sitting in the bank, sometimes one you have met, so writing them again would only have handed you the same fact twice under a different heading. The other three we could not ask fairly: on each one a second choice turned out to be just as defensible as the one we would have marked correct, and rather than reword it until it looked clean we left it out.
Liver and pancreas: 14 new questions, 30 shortened
New- New
Fourteen new short, direct questions on the liver, gallbladder and pancreas, a topic that until now had none: where the pain is, which enzyme points where, and what to do first when a bleeding tube slips. more ▾less ▴
The liver, gallbladder and pancreas topic now has fourteen new questions of a kind it did not have a single one of before. Every question in it used to be a patient story, and several of you have told us the real exam asks a great many short, direct questions as well, especially on basic concepts and medicines. So these fourteen are short and direct. They ask where gallbladder pain is felt and where pancreatic pain is felt, which enzyme actually points at the pancreas, why the clotting time stretches out in liver disease, what a blocked bile duct does to the colour of the stools, what to do first when a balloon tube used to stop bleeding veins slips, and what a client may and may not lift after the gallbladder comes out. The four choices on each one come from the same page of the same textbook, so they all look right and one fine fact decides between them. Every fact was checked against a source before the question went in, and two of them were rebuilt after that check disagreed with the first draft.
New cram sheets: Sick Child B and Reproductive Health
New- New
A new cram sheet, Sick Child B, covering the sickle cell crises and childhood leukemia, raised pressure in an infant skull and meningitis, nephrotic syndrome against glomerulonephritis, the common skin infections of Filipino children, and the hip, foot, spine and fractures of childhood. more ▾less ▴
There is a new cram sheet in your Resources library, Sick Child B, on the NP2 shelf. It is the second of the two sick child sheets and it takes the blood, the brain, the kidney, the skin and the bones of a child who is already ill. The blood part puts the four sickle cell crises in one table with the crisis care in the order you give it, fluids first and never meperidine, then sets hemophilia, ITP and von Willebrand disease side by side by the one lab that tells them apart, and follows acute lymphoblastic leukemia from the first blood count through the four phases of chemotherapy, the neutropenic room and the bleeding plan, before Wilms tumor, neuroblastoma, the bone tumors and retinoblastoma are sorted by age and by the one thing you must not do. The brain part reads raised pressure inside a skull that can still stretch, the fontanel, the shrill cry, the shunt and its alarm signs by age, then takes meningitis with its droplet clock, seizure first aid and the febrile seizure, Reye syndrome, cerebral palsy, the three neural tube defects with the care of the sac, the head injury from the sofa and the child pulled from the water. The kidney part covers the urinary tract infection and reflux, nephrotic syndrome against glomerulonephritis in one table of two children, hemolytic uremic syndrome, bedwetting, the undescended testis and the urethral openings in the wrong place. The skin part fits kuto, galis, buni, an-an, impetigo, candida and eczema in one table with the burned child after it, and the bones part runs from the hip that dislocates and the clubfoot through scoliosis, the limping child by age, juvenile arthritis, brittle bones, Duchenne, the child's fracture, traction, cast care and the fracture that must be reported. It closes with a first action table, five precautions and a one page list of every number on the sheet.
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Ten illustrations were made for it. Three body maps show what the doorway shows: the child with nephrotic syndrome beside the child with glomerulonephritis, drawn as one picture of two children so the puffy eyes and the swollen belly on one side sit across from the tea colored urine and the raised blood pressure on the other; the infant with hydrocephalus, from the bulging fontanel to the widened scalp veins; and the child with leukemia, pale and bruised with the swollen glands and the bleeding gums pointed at. A pair of drawings shows the two meningitis signs you will be asked to name, the knee that will not straighten and the hips that flex when the neck is bent. The flow of spinal fluid is on a real medical plate with numbered markers, and the shunt that drains it is drawn in place on an infant with its parts labeled. The three neural tube defects sit on a public health plate, the Pavlik harness is drawn from the front and the back, the clubfoot is a real photograph, and an age ladder puts every age bound diagnosis of childhood on one line.
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The Philippine layer carries what a Filipino family will ask you. PhilHealth's Z benefit covers acute lymphoblastic leukemia in a child at five hundred thousand pesos released in three tranches, and the Cancer Assistance Fund of Republic Act 11215 sits beside it. A child with cerebral palsy is entitled to the PWD ID under Republic Act 10754. The skin table uses the names you hear in the health center, kuto, lisa, galis, buni, an-an and hadhad, and it warns that impetigo in our humid climate is the usual road to glomerulonephritis a few weeks later. And the fracture that does not match the story is a report under Republic Act 7610, with what you document and to whom.
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A new cram sheet, Reproductive Health, on the NP2 shelf: the two tracts part by part, the cycle told four ways, every menstrual disorder, the scrotum, conception, inheritance and the chromosome syndromes, the subfertile couple, and the ethics of maternal care. more ▾less ▴
There is a second new cram sheet in your Resources library today, Reproductive Health, on the NP2 shelf. It carries what no other sheet does. The two tracts are named part by part: the vulva from front to back, the vagina with its acid and its fornices, the uterus in three layers with its ligaments and positions, the tube in four segments with the one that is tied and the one where the egg is met, the ovary and the breast; and on the male side the two cell types of the testis, the seven stops a sperm passes on its way out, and which gland adds what to semen. The cycle is told four ways, as the axis, the ovary, the lining and the signs you can read on the body, with the fixed fourteen day rule that answers every question about cycles of different lengths, and every menstrual disorder from amenorrhea to toxic shock has its definition and its first move. Menopause is dated the way the exam dates it and placed at about forty-eight for Filipino women. The prostate is sorted into benign and cancer, the after-surgery irrigation scenario is walked through, and six scrotal swellings are told apart in one table. Then conception day by day, the three inheritance patterns with their odds, the karyotype notation, the syndromes a nurse must recognize at the cot side, screening against diagnosis, and newborn screening. The subfertile couple gets the year rule, the three basic tests, what each test needs from you, ovulation drugs and every assisted route, and the last part is the ethics of maternal care as the exam scores it: the principles named for maternity scenarios, consent and refusal, the spouse, the minor, the objecting nurse, and who does what on a short-staffed unit.
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Nine illustrations were made for it. The ovary across one month is a real medical plate with numbered markers from the resting follicle to the scar it leaves, and the lining of the uterus is drawn day by day with its four phases banded above it. The three inheritance patterns are drawn as squares you can count, the two weeks from ovulation to a missed period sit on one clock, the three temperature charts a nurse must recognize are side by side, the subfertility workup runs as a ladder from when to refer through assisted reproduction, and a flow chart settles who decides in maternity care. Two body maps show what the first examination shows: the newborn with trisomy 21 seen from above, with the palm crease, the eyes, the tongue and the floppy tone pointed at, and Turner and Klinefelter syndrome drawn as two sixteen-year-olds standing side by side at the same scale, so the height, the neck, the chest and the limbs can be compared at a glance.
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The Philippine layer carries the law as it stands. The Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act is summarized with what the Supreme Court struck from it in 2014, so the sheet says plainly that a husband cannot veto his wife's refusal or her request for a method, that a minor needs a parent's written consent for a modern method, and that a nurse who objects to contraception must still refer her without delay. The Magna Carta of Women's list of health services, the health worker's duties under the anti-violence law with the three protection orders, the abortion articles of the penal code and the penalty they reserve for a nurse, adoption under the 2022 law that no longer needs a court, the expanded newborn screen under the Newborn Screening Act, and the fact that surrogacy has no Philippine law are all on the sheet.
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2Sep · Wed
New cram sheets: Sick Child A and Infectious Disorders
New- New
A new cram sheet, Sick Child A, covering the congenital heart defects, the tet spell and infant heart failure, rheumatic fever and Kawasaki, croup to cystic fibrosis, dehydration and the three obstructions of infancy, and the surgical newborn gut. more ▾less ▴
There is a new cram sheet in your Resources library, Sick Child A, on the NP2 shelf. It is the first of the two sick child sheets and it takes the heart, the airway and the gut of a child who is already ill. The heart half sorts every congenital defect by where the blood goes, so a hole, a narrowing and a swapped vessel stop being a list to memorize and become three stories you can reason through, then walks the tet spell in the order you act on it, the early signs of heart failure in a baby who sweats through a feed, the digoxin rules a parent must be able to recite back, rheumatic fever by the Jones criteria in the version that actually applies to the Philippines, and Kawasaki disease by stage. The airway half sets croup, epiglottitis, bronchiolitis and the aspirated peanut side by side by sound and by first move, then covers pneumonia, childhood asthma, cystic fibrosis, apnea, tonsillectomy, otitis media and safe sleep. The gut half grades dehydration three ways, teaches oral rehydration and zinc the way the health center gives them, and puts the three obstructions of infancy, pyloric stenosis, intussusception and Hirschsprung disease, in one table so the olive, the currant jelly and the ribbon stool stay apart in your head, before the cleft lip, the fistula, the imperforate anus, the wall defects and the poisoned toddler. It closes with a scenario table and a one page list of every number on the sheet.
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Seven illustrations were made for it. The six congenital heart defects are shown on six real medical plates rather than drawings of our own, with the defect ringed on each one so you can see the hole between the ventricles, the hole between the atria, the open duct, the pinched aorta, the overriding aorta of tetralogy and the swapped vessels of transposition. A body map of a child in respiratory distress points at the hollows above the sternum, between the ribs and along the rib margin, because retractions are the sign you will be asked to read. A second body map shows the dehydrated infant, from the sunken soft spot to the skin pinch that stays up. And three pictures show things you may never have seen in a ward: a mother folding her baby into the knee chest position during a spell, a cleft lip baby being fed and then protected after repair, and an oxygen hood beside a bulb syringe in use.
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The Philippine layer carries the numbers that matter to a family. PhilHealth's Z benefits now pay for a child's heart surgery, closure of a ventricular septal defect and total correction of tetralogy of Fallot, with no co-payment in a ward bed at a contracted hospital, and PhilHealth has an outpatient package for the monthly penicillin injection that keeps rheumatic fever from coming back. The pneumonia dosing follows the Philippine pediatric guideline, the poisoning row names kerosene as the number one poison of Filipino children and gives the national poison center's hotline, and the cleft row tells the family that the repair is free through Smile Train's partner hospitals.
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A second new cram sheet, Infectious, Inflammatory and Immunologic Disorders: hypersensitivity, lupus and scleroderma, transplant rejection, HIV from the window period to AIDS, every STI, precautions and the needlestick protocol. more ▾less ▴
There is a second new cram sheet in your Resources library today, Infectious, Inflammatory and Immunologic Disorders, on the NP3 shelf. It takes everything the immune system does wrong: too little, too much, and against its owner. It opens with the cast of immune cells on real medical plates and the labs that read them, then puts the four hypersensitivity types on one grid so anaphylaxis, the wrong blood transfusion, serum sickness and the tuberculin skin test finally sit apart by the clock. Lupus and scleroderma are drawn on the body, with the classic four of eleven criteria beside the 2019 score, then Sjogren, polymyositis and the drugs that follow every autoimmune disease. Transplant rejection is told by the clock, hyperacute, acute and chronic, with the immunosuppressant watch list. The HIV part runs from the window period to AIDS: how it spreads and how it does not, the life cycle as the drug map, the two curves over ten years, the opportunistic infections by CD4 count, testing the way the Philippines confirms it, treatment for everyone on the day of diagnosis, PrEP and PEP. Every sexually transmitted infection is set side by side with syphilis by the calendar, then standard precautions, the order you put protective gear on and take it off, the resistant organisms, the needlestick protocol minute by minute, COVID-19 in the words that changed, Crohn against colitis and Guillain-Barre as patterns, and it closes with a first-action table, the numbers, a drug index and the memory hooks.
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Ten illustrations were made for it. The HIV virion and the immune cells it destroys sit on real medical plates with numbered markers. Three body maps show what the doorway shows: advanced HIV disease with the thrush, the shingles band, the Kaposi plaques and the wasting; lupus with the butterfly rash, the sun exposed V of the chest, the thinning hair and the Raynaud fingertips; and scleroderma with every letter of CREST pointed at, from the spider spots on the cheeks to the chalky lumps at the fingertips. The four hypersensitivity types are one grid, HIV's viral load and CD4 count are two curves over ten years with the infection thresholds under them, transplant rejection and syphilis are each a timeline, the needlestick is a flowchart by the hour, and one nurse is shown four times putting on gown, respirator, face shield and gloves in the order the exam asks.
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The Philippine layer carries what a Filipino nurse is asked about. The DOH count for the last quarter of 2025, forty seven new HIV diagnoses a day and more than 163,000 since 1984, almost all of them sexual. The HIV law, RA 11166, in the two clauses that recur: a person can consent to a test alone from age fifteen, and the result belongs to the patient. Free treatment at the DOH treatment hubs through PhilHealth's outpatient HIV package, now 58,500 pesos a year, the rapid confirmatory algorithm that gives a same day result, the new national PrEP and PEP guideline, the pairing of HIV with tuberculosis, and the social hygiene clinics where testing is free. For transplant, PhilHealth's kidney transplant benefit rose to two million pesos in 2025 with a new package for the drugs afterward, and the Organ Donation Act lets anyone of eighteen make the legacy.
Your study plan can now cover only the exam sections you still need
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Your study plan can now cover only the exam sections you still need to sit, from the new Sections button on the Schedule page. more ▾less ▴
If your boards were split or rescheduled and you only need to sit part of them, your study plan can now cover just those sections. On the Schedule page, the new Sections button next to your dates lets you pick Everything, Day 1 only (NP1 to NP3), Day 2 only (NP4 to NP5), or any custom mix, and the same choice appears when you build a new plan. Your remaining days rebuild around the sections you picked, only the matching mock board day is scheduled, and a plan covering fewer sections may use a shorter window than the usual fourteen days. Everything you have already finished carries over, and your previous plan stays restorable. Two students whose Day 2 was moved asked for exactly this.
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