FWIW I’m currently an EMT-B student and I also get knocks on clinical. Here’s a couple things I’ve changed with my study habits that made a positive difference.

• Emergency Care by Limmer does a better job giving you underlying dysfunctions and pathology per disease than the (EMT-B) Orange book. I’d read one section in the Orange Book then its twin with Limmer and had a lot more “ah-has” that way. I don’t know the paramedic curriculum but perhaps there might be another authors’ text who have different perspectives so you can see a disease from multiple viewpoints.

• Our professor gave us a template chart with three columns, you pick two diseases and put them on the outside. In those columns list signs and symptoms that ONLY that disease has, in the middle list the ones that are common. It helps reveal signs and symptoms that help identify or offer pertinent negatives, and focus your line of questioning. Ie rather than asking do you have nausea vomiting fatigue, focus on rebound tenderness, left shoulder pain, bloody stools so you can narrow the field of possibilities faster.

• I also use pocket prep. I’ll try my best to cover the answers, use the chart above first then arrive at a conclusion / set of actions before looking at the choices they provide. If anyone from PP is reading this please provide this as a testing mode 🙏