1.3 Reading the 2025 Tables of Specifications & Building a Study Plan
Key Takeaways
Resolution No. 19 (s. 2025) gives each PLE subject a 100-item Table of Specifications with content areas, item counts and revised-Bloom levels (remembering to creating).
The heaviest single areas are Legal Medicine's nature of medicolegal cases (50 items), Preventive Medicine's health care provider and Philippine health system roles (30 each), and Surgery's basic surgical principles (20).
Obstetrics and Gynecology is split 60 obstetric and 40 gynecologic items; Medicine gives 15 items to cardiovascular disease but only 2 to rehabilitation medicine.
Each 2-hour session allows about 72 seconds per item, and calculators are banned, so practice hand calculation for rates, doses and fluids.
Philippine-specific content recurs across subjects: DOH programs, the EPI schedule, IMCI, rabies and leptospirosis prophylaxis, PIDSR surveillance, UHC, and laws such as RA 6675, RA 9165, RA 11223 and RA 2382.
What the Tables of Specifications contain
In 2025 the Professional Regulatory Board of Medicine adopted enhanced Tables of Specifications (TOS) for every PLE subject (Resolution No. 19, s. 2025). They apply from the October 2025 PLE onward. Each subject table has four parts:
- Competencies. Examples: "given a clinical scenario, localize the anatomic part described"; "formulate a diagnosis"; "identify measures to prevent identified diseases". The verbs tell you that most items are clinical vignettes, not bare definitions.
- Content areas with a percentage weight and an item count out of 100.
- Classification by revised Bloom's taxonomy: Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating and Creating. The mix differs by subject. As read from the published tables, about half of the Pediatrics items sit at the applying level, while Pharmacology and OB-GYN put about half of their items at understanding. Legal Medicine places its largest block (about 30 items) at analyzing.
- Clinical framing: burden of disease, clinical presentation and correlation, diagnosis, management, and health promotion or disease prevention. Most clinical subjects repeat this pattern for every content area.
Content weights by subject
| Subject (100 items each) | Heaviest content areas in the 2025 TOS |
|---|---|
| Physiology | Cardiovascular 17; neurophysiology with special senses 17; general and cellular physiology (including blood) 15; respiratory 12; endocrine 12; GI, renal/acid-base and reproductive 9 each |
| Legal Medicine, Jurisprudence and Ethics | Nature of medicolegal cases 50; medicolegal examination 10; licensure and regulation 10; malpractice 10; physician relationships 10; bioethical principles 10; medicolegal report and death certificate 5 |
| Pathology | Infectious diseases 12; GI, cardiovascular and respiratory 10 each; genitourinary and nervous 9 each; basic pathology 8; developmental disorders and neoplasia 8; immunopathology 7; hematopoietic and endocrine 6 each; environmental and nutritional 5 |
| Biochemistry | Carbohydrates, protein metabolism, amino acid and protein biochemistry, nutrition, and cardiovascular biochemistry 12 each; genetics and enzymes, musculoskeletal bioenergetics, respiratory biochemistry and immunology 10 each |
| Anatomy and Histology | Ten areas of 10 items each: thorax, abdomen, pelvis and perineum, back, lower limb, upper limb, head, neck, skin, histology |
| Microbiology and Parasitology | Respiratory, gastrointestinal and multisystemic infections 15 each; cardiovascular and reproductive tract 10 each; genitourinary and integumentary 8 each; nervous and hematopoietic/lymphatic 7 each; musculoskeletal 5 |
| Obstetrics and Gynecology | 60 obstetric items (labor, prenatal care and fetal complications 8 each) and 40 gynecologic items across 21 lettered areas |
| Pediatrics and Nutrition | Infectious diseases 14; newborn, nutrition, growth and immunization 10; respiratory, GI, genitourinary and hematologic/immunologic 10 each; cardiovascular, CNS, endocrine and oncologic/genetic 9 each |
| Preventive Medicine and Public Health | Health care provider 30; Philippine health care system and community medicine 30; researcher 20; administrative manager 10; social mobilizer and leader 10 |
| Pharmacology and Therapeutics | Cardiovascular 16; genitourinary 16; nervous system 15; endocrine 15; respiratory 14; digestive 12; cutaneous and musculoskeletal 12 |
| Surgery | Basic surgical principles 20; eight blocks of 10 (three abdomen blocks, head and neck, breast/hernia/soft tissue, and three specialty blocks) |
| Medicine | Cardiovascular 15; digestive, endocrine, renal, respiratory and neurology 12 each; rheumatology 9; hematology/immunology 7; psychiatry 4; dermatology 3; rehabilitation 2 |
How to use the weights. The 50% subject floor punishes a neglected subject. The 75% average rewards depth in heavy areas. A practical rule is to cover every content area at least once, then spend extra time in proportion to the item counts above. For example, Legal Medicine's 50 medicolegal-case items (identification, death, injuries, sexual crimes, mental state and poisoning) deserve more hours than its 5-item medicolegal report area.
A 24-week plan
| Weeks | Focus | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 6 | Physiology, Biochemistry, Anatomy and Histology | One TOS area per study block, with a 20-item self-test per area |
| 7 to 11 | Pathology, Microbiology and Parasitology, Pharmacology | Organ-system tables linking mechanism, pathogen, lesion and drug |
| 12 to 17 | Medicine, Surgery, Pediatrics, OB-GYN | Case-based review: burden, presentation, diagnosis, management, prevention |
| 18 to 20 | Preventive Medicine and Legal Medicine | Formula drills (rates, screening, PEP categories) and statute tables |
| 21 to 24 | Timed 100-item blocks in exam-day order | Error log sorted by subject and TOS area; re-read the weakest areas |
Simulate the real days. Run three 2-hour blocks starting at 8:00, 11:00 and 2:00, in the Resolution No. 05 order: Physiology, Legal Medicine, Pathology; then Biochemistry, Anatomy, Microbiology; then OB-GYN, Pediatrics, Preventive Medicine; then Pharmacology, Surgery, Medicine.
Pacing and calculation
A 100-item, 120-minute session allows 72 seconds per item.
- First pass: answer items you can settle in under a minute, and mark the rest.
- Second pass: work through the marked vignettes.
- Final minutes: check that every answer is shaded against the correct item number.
PRC does not publish a penalty for wrong answers, but a blank item can never earn credit, so answer every item.
Calculators are banned, so build hand-calculation fluency for:
- incidence, prevalence, rates and screening test values;
- sensitivity, specificity, predictive values, relative risk, odds ratio and number needed to treat;
- maintenance fluids (Holliday-Segar), Parkland burn resuscitation and drug doses per kilogram;
- the anion gap and Winter's formula.
Philippine content that recurs across subjects
| Topic | Where it appears in this guide |
|---|---|
| Medical Act (RA 2382), PRC (RA 8981), CPD (RA 10912), Code of Ethics | Legal Medicine III |
| Revised Penal Code physical injuries, anti-rape law (RA 8353), RA 11648 | Legal Medicine II |
| Generics Act (RA 6675) and Dangerous Drugs Act (RA 9165) | Legal Medicine III and Pharmacology |
| Universal Health Care Act (RA 11223), devolution (RA 7160), PhilHealth Konsulta | Preventive Medicine II |
| PIDSR notifiable diseases, outbreak investigation, SPEED | Preventive Medicine II and III |
| EPI schedule (RA 10152), EINC, IMCI, newborn screening (RA 9288) | Pediatrics I and II |
| National TB program, rabies (RA 9482), leptospirosis prophylaxis, dengue, malaria and schistosomiasis | Microbiology, Medicine and Preventive Medicine |
| Sanitation Code (PD 856), health care waste color coding, DRRM-H | Preventive Medicine II and III |
Treat clinical-guideline content as Philippine practice first. When a DOH or Philippine society guideline differs from a foreign one, the PLE tests the local standard.
Under the 2025 Legal Medicine Table of Specifications, which content area carries the largest number of items?
Nature of medicolegal cases, such as identification, death, injuries, sexual crimes, mental state and poisoning
Licensure and regulation of medical practice in the Philippines
The medicolegal report and the death certificate
Basic bioethical principles applied to clinical and research scenarios, including informed consent and confidentiality
A reviewee has three weeks left and has never studied rehabilitation medicine or dermatology for the Medicine subject. Based on the 2025 Medicine TOS, what is the most efficient decision?
Skip Medicine entirely, because it is the last subject on day 4
Study only psychiatry, because it is the only behavioral area in the table
Review them briefly, because together they carry about 5 of 100 items, and prioritize cardiovascular
Spend most of the remaining time on them, because the 50% subject floor applies to each content area
Why should PLE reviewees practice computing screening-test values and pediatric maintenance fluids by hand?
Calculators are allowed only during the Preventive Medicine session
The PLE program prohibits all kinds of calculators inside the examination premises
These items are scored only if the written solution is attached to the answer sheet
PRC provides only basic four-function calculators for the clinical subjects
Sections you finish are checked off in the contents.