@TheOncoPT – Dr. Elise K Cantu (00:19)
Stop right there. Before you spend another eight-hour day memorizing contraindications and treatment side effects, you are probably gonna forget anyways, ask yourself this one question. Are you studying hard or are you studying smart?

hours of grinding are useless. If you’re focused on the wrong things or using study methods that don’t gel with you.

The difference between passing your specialty certification exam with confidence and battling burnout every step of the way is rarely about who is the smartest onkoPT in the room. It’s almost always about your strategy. So if you’re stressed about your oncology specialty certification exam, you feel like you’re drowning in information, this video is for you. I’m going to show you how to build a framework to study smarter, not just harder.

So that you can walk into your exam feeling ready.

Let’s be real. The sheer volume of content in oncology rehabilitation is overwhelming. And it’s only growing every single day. Which is great, but also more to study.

You’re trying to be a great clinician, you’re balancing a full caseload, and you’re somehow also trying to master a massive field that covers everything from postmastectomy lymphedema to chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy to this, that, and the other, et cetera, The biggest trap is treating specialty prep

Like a three-month cram session. Therapists who do this spend 90 days trying to force feed themselves literal years of clinical practice. The answer is not more hours, it’s a better roadmap.

And that’s what we’re building today. We are going to break down the Study SMARTER Framework into five actionable steps, which are going to target the most important topics, finding study techniques that actually work for you and your brain, using active learning, managing your resources without getting overwhelmed, and mastering your time to keep burnout at bay. This isn’t just about passing the exam, it’s about reclaiming your sanity.

Your first strategic move is to stop studying blindly. You need to focus on what is most likely going to be on this exam. One of your most powerful tools in this is the ABPTS Oncology Specialty Certification, the Candidate Guide, and the DSP. It is shocking to me after years of coaching physical therapists through this process. Shocking to me how many PTs have never.

looked at these documents, who have never read these. And that is a huge unforced error.

These documents literally tell you the breakdown of the exam, as in down to the percentage of the exam that’s devoted to this content area versus this content area over here. So, for example, in the current guidelines that I’m looking at right now, the overwhelming majority of the exam is covering the patient and client management model. It’s almost 70% of the exam. And so within that, the intervention and instruction module or area.

Is the biggest piece at 27%, followed by the examination and re-examination content at 23%. So these are very, very big important areas of knowledge, of practice that are absolutely going to show up on the exam.

In contrast, the entire domain of foundational knowledge areas is about 15%. And when I coach physical therapists through this process, when they come to me at first, they are spending the majority of their time in this foundational knowledge area, aka that 15%, instead of the almost 70% of the patient and client management model.

So, what does this mean for you? This means that your study time should roughly reflect these percentages. It sounds so simple, but it’s a focused approach that most PTs completely ignore. Do not spend a week on a 5% topic and only two days on a 27% topic. That said, don’t completely ignore these lower weight areas. They will show up in the exam. You do need to be confident in these areas because every question does count. However,

Prioritize what is most important, what is most weighted on these exams. So your first action item is to download the ABPTS candidate guide for the oncology section with the DSP. Go through it. Use it to map out your study plan, which is going to give you more time to those heavy hitters. And not so much with those little 5%, 15% areas here.

This one act shifts you from being a passive victim of information overload to an active strategic learner. This is your roadmap. Don’t start your journey without it.

Okay, so now you know what to study. Next we need to figure out how you study best.

So many PTs just default to whatever their colleagues are doing or whatever they used in PT school without ever asking themselves, is this actually working for me?

let’s be clear, the old school learning styles theory, the whole idea that you are strictly a visual or an auditory or a tactile learner, there’s not a lot of great science behind it. The real key isn’t about fitting yourself into maybe an outdated, incorrect box, but rather being self-aware and finding the methods that actually make things stick for you.

So think about it this way: when you encounter a complex topic with your patients, how do you navigate through that? Do you need to see the problem, the issue? Maybe you’re a visual person. For you, maybe watching videos, drawing out pathways, the anatomy, or making mind maps for connecting these topics to different subtopics.

May be more effective than you just reading a wall of text, endless articles.

or do you learn best by listening? In that case, your commute is your new study hall. Load up on podcasts that are relevant to the different topics you’re working on. When you’re reviewing a tough concept, maybe you actually record yourself explaining it out loud and then you listen back to it. This kind of verbal processing can be extremely powerful if this is something that your brain gels with. Or

Do you need to do something with that information to really get it to stick in your brain? This is where you really learn by interacting. So case-based questions from practice exams become a superpower for you. Or you could turn your study space into a dynamic lab. You have a whiteboard where you’re mapping out different concepts, or maybe you’re even walking around while you review your flashcards. At this point, I want you to take a minute to review and reflect on your past successes.

What have been the methods that have helped you really learn and master information? The goal here is to match your study activities to your cognitive strengths. By trying to force a method that is unnatural, you’re basically swimming upstream. It is exhausting, and you’re not going to get very far in the study process.

Now, if you’re thinking right now, okay, I’ve got an idea of how I want to start studying, but I don’t actually know what to start studying with, I want you to check out this free audit tool that I’ve created called the Oncology Specialty Exam Readiness Audit. This is going to enable you to look through different topics that are likely going to show up on the Oncology Specialty Certification Exam and identify areas that you are confident in that you’re knowledgeable in.

and those that maybe you’re not as confident in, that you need some more time, some more work with. This is going to help you really curate your study plan so that you can be successful on game day, aka exam day. You can find that in the link in the description box below.

this next pillar is maybe the most important. You have to switch from passive review to active recall. Let me say that one more time. Passive review to active recall. Now, passively rereading your notes and highlighting book chapters is one of the least effective ways to study. It tricks your brain, it tricks you into thinking that you know material because it looks familiar.

Active recall is the act of forcing yourself, your brain to retrieve information from the vault, from the depths of your enormous, wonderful brain, which is actually what builds and strengthens memory. Two evidence-based techniques are going to be your friend here: active recall and spaced repetition. So first up is active recall. The best way to do this is actually with practice questions.

But here’s the professional move. It’s like the secret sauce that most oncology PTs who succeed, this is what they’re doing. You’re gonna do the questions before you actually study that topic, before you read that article, before you go over that textbook chapter.

In doing so, you force your brain to struggle a little bit. When you get a question wrong, the explanation from I got it wrong, now I need to figure out what is the correct answer and why the correct answer is what it is. This is going to help that explanation stick like glue in your brain because you have very obviously exposed a knowledge gap that you have, and your brain is now primed to fill that gap with knowledge. Another new technique that I learned about actually when I was

Preparing for this video, actually use this when I’m teaching undergrad students. I just didn’t know it had a name. It’s called the Feynmid method, Feynman method or the Feynman technique. So you’re gonna pick a concept, maybe the pathophysiology of axillary web syndrome. And on a blank sheet of paper, you are going to try to explain it in the simplest terms, like you’re explaining this to a first year PT student. Think back to your first year PT student self.

You’re so precious. So you’re going to explain the pathophysiology of axillary web syndrome to first year you or first year, you know, else other students, right? The second that you get stuck or you find yourself defaulting to kind of fuzzy jargon words, you have found the edge of your understanding, right? That and beyond that, this is the gap. This is the gap that we’re gonna fill.

So you’re now gonna go back to the source material. Maybe that’s a textbook chapter, maybe that’s an article, maybe that’s another resource that you’re using for this. You’re gonna fill in that gap and you’re gonna simplify your explanation again.

What I tell my students is when you can explain a concept to somebody else and they understand it, then you understand it, which is exactly what this method is getting at here.

Now, our second tool here is spaced repetition. This is your weapon against the forgetting curve of information here. So instead of cramming a topic just once and not thinking about it until exam day again, you are going to review areas, content areas, topics at increasing intervals over time. So you see that information right around the time where you would normally start to forget it, which is going to help make your memory stronger and more durable.

AKA you can actually use it better on exam day. This might mean you’re using, you know, like flashcards or other kind of review materials that can actually schedule you to, it’s time to review the pathophysiology of axillary web syndrome again. This combo of spaced repetition, of active recall, is an absolute powerhouse. Build your study sessions around these two tools.

This is meaning that you’re going to spend less time reading and more time quizzing, explaining, and actually retrieving the information, which is building you towards that eventual specialty exam that you’ll take.

The field of oncology rehab is a jungle of potential resources, and trying to use all of them is a one way ticket to feeling overwhelmed.

The key isn’t just to collect more textbooks or download all of the articles. It’s to choose a few key resources and use them well. Most successful Onko PTs stick to a two-layer stack, which is where they have one active practice engine and one deep reference source. Let me explain.

Your active practice engine is a high quality question bank. This is a non-negotiable because this is where you’re actually going to do that active recall that we just finished talking about. There are some options available out there, but this is an absolute non-negotiable if you’re really going to take that knowledge and put it into practice. for your reference source, there are different

resources that I would mention out there. A really great one that I’ll include actually in the description box below is the Oncology Rehab textbook. the first edition came out a few years ago and every PT that I have encountered who has gone through the specialty prep process has said that that textbook was instrumental to their to their preparation. And one thing that they really liked about it is that it’s written for physical therapists by physical therapists, many of whom are either

certified, you know, specialists themselves have already been certified specialists or are even involved in the building of the specialty certification exam, which is pretty cool. There are other textbooks out there that can be useful, but this is probably the one that I’ve heard the most about when it comes to being really useful. again, there’s others, a couple other key resources like reference sources, I would use the

2017 article of focused reuse safety considerations in cancer rehab. Can you tell I love that article? By Maltzer et al. is a really, really good one. Yeah, I know it’s a little bit of an oldie. It is a Goldie, and I haven’t seen anything else that eclipses it. the APTA Edge Annotated Bibliography, so APTA Oncology Edge Annotated Bibliography is also a really, really good tool when it comes to outcome measures.

These are highly regarded comprehensive mainstays for oncology physical therapists navigating this process. So I would really encourage you, I will link those resources down below in the description box, like hands down some of the most useful tools that I have used, that I have recommended, and that I have heard about when it comes to preparing effectively for your, you know, oncology specialty certification exam.

Now, beyond this core stack, you can supplement. If you know that you’re lacking in a particular area, for example, if you are not a certified lymphedema therapist, that’s okay. You don’t have to be in order to sit for the exam. However, I have heard from PTs who have taken the exam, they feel like being a CLT really helped them. So if you don’t have that CLT training or background or knowledge,

You may choose to invest in the lymphedema management textbook. I actually have mine, yeah, actually down on my bookshelf over there. That could be a really useful tool. I will also link to that in the description box below. So you will find that you need to supplement in different areas. So if you’re maybe not as strong when it comes to graph versus host disease.

Maybe you need to go and download those articles on GPHD so that you can read up on those and feel really confident in your knowledge and fill in those knowledge gaps, for example. Now one last tip that I have during this process. Day one of your prep.

And I want you to have a notebook that is purely for your oncology specialty certification prep. And you’re gonna write down clinical pearls from mentors, interesting cases, or anything else that you have to look up or otherwise identify. This is really interesting. This is really important. And by the time that you are, you know, studying for boards and you are into that process, this notebook is going to be gold.

Because this information is tied to real patient experiences that you can then pull from and reflect on and use that active recall and that application with, which is ultimately preparing you for what is actually going to be on the exam with all of those patient vignettes, for example.

Let’s talk about time management and preventing burnout. You cannot run this marathon of an exam if you burn out. Burnout is a serious and widespread issue among physical therapists, especially oncology physical therapists, and this dedicated specialty certification prep time is a very high risk period for burnout. Protecting your well-being is not a luxury, it’s a critical part of your effective study strategy.

before we go through how to manage your time and prevent burnout, I highly encourage you to go back and watch my previous video on how to schedule a sustainable study plan for your oncology specialist exam. In that video, which you can find here, I walk you through the sustainable study framework that is going to get you across the finish line without blowing your life up in the process.

Now let’s get back to today’s tips on time management and preventing burnout. first, get control of your schedule. You are going to use a planner, whether that is electronic or written, and you are going to schedule everything, including your breaks. a great method is to work in focused blocks. So you study hard for a period of time.

And then you actually take a real break. What I recommend is studying in 50-minute blocks of time and then get up for a 10-minute break. And when you take a break, you actually take a break. You’re not checking your email, you’re not scrolling through social media, you’re gonna get up, you’re gonna walk around, you’re gonna leave your study space for a little bit, stretch, maybe talk to another human, pet the dog, for example. But you are actually gonna take that break

And then get back to your next study block. Second is to protect your day off. I know it sounds impossible, but you need to take one full day off of studying every week. This is the rule that most onko PTs resist the most, but it is vital for the long term retention and preventing mental fatigue as you go through your study prep. This is the day that your brain is really consolidating.

Everything that you’ve been working so hard to learn.

Additionally, you need to give yourself a hard stop time each night. An hour or two that is just for you, not for studying, before bedtime so that you can decompress and start to let your brain recover from your study session.

Third, sleep is non-negotiable, right? Aim for seven to nine hours of good quality sleep,

Studying for six hours on a full night of sleep is far more effective than studying for eight hours on only five hours of sleep.

Sleep is literally when that memory consolidation happens. Skimping on your sleep is actively sabotaging your efforts.

And finally, move your body. You know this as a physical therapist, but exercise is a potent tool when it comes to managing stress and boosting your brain function. Even a quick walk can help you clear your head and make your next study block more productive. as I like to say, you cannot pour from an empty cup. So to take care of your future patients, you have to take care of yourself first.

Let’s recap the five pillars of the study smarter framework. Number one, use the ABPTS DSP and the candidate guide to focus on the highest yield topics. Second, experiment to find the study activities that gel best with your brain and how you prefer to learn.

Number three, build your plan around evidence-based powerhouses like active recall and spaced repetition.

Number four, pick your resources strategically. A great question bank and a core set of references are going to help you tune out the noise of the volumes of content that is out there when it comes to oncology rehab.

And number five, manage your time and prioritize rest to prevent burnout because a healthy, rested mind learns best.

The Path to Oncology specialty certification is a marathon, not a sprint. The anxiety you’re feeling is real, but you can absolutely manage it with a smart strategic plan. You have what it takes to master this material. Trust the process, trust your training, and please be as kind to yourself as you are to your patients.

Before we go, if you’re prepping for your oncology specialty certification exam, I have a new training that I think you’ll find really useful. It’s called From Confused to Confident, and in it I teach a four-step framework for decoding any question that you encounter on your specialty certification exam. We’re going to work through real questions, and you will walk away with a system that you can use immediately, both in your studying and on the actual day of the exam. The link to register is in the description box below, and it is

completely free.

Now, at this point, most OncoPTs feel really confident in their knowledge of oncology rehab. But the actual test taking part is a completely different story.

So in my next video, I’m gonna walk you through the tried and true testing strategies.

for your oncology specialty certification exam, so that you can turn your knowledge into a passing score.

And if you found this video helpful, please make sure that you’re subscribed. I put out new videos each week for oncology physical therapists, and I will see you in the next one.

@TheOncoPT – Dr. Elise K Cantu (22:08)
Hey Onko PT, thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Onko PT Podcast. As you heard me mention in last week’s episode, July I’m using on the podcast to experiment. I’m trying to see what’s working, what people are are vibing with, and what is ultimately most helpful for my audience. So I would really, really love to hear from you. If you would please either message me on Instagram or on LinkedIn and let me know how.

How’d you like? How are you liking this different format of episodes I’m doing on the Onko PT podcast? What would you like to see more of on the Onko PT Podcast moving forward? I’m always looking for ways to improve the podcast, to make sure that it’s really reaching you where you need it, right? To help you in the ways that you need help, but I don’t know that if I don’t hear from you. So please, please shoot me a message either on Instagram or LinkedIn. I would love to hear from you on that. But until then, this is Elise with the Onko PT.

And remember, you are exactly the physical therapist that your patients with cancer need. So let’s get to work.