Pharmacy Preregistration Exam: September Exam

The next RPSGB pharmacy preregistration exam takes place on the last friday of september. For everyone thats taking the exam for the first time be prepared and get tips from anyone that took the exam in June, for those who failed the June RPSGB Preregistration exam, hopefully your working hard and learnt from your mistakes, hope everyone passes.

Here are some tips which I found might be useful for those that are retaking or taking for the first time:

1. Know your BNF
When I was studying for the exam my tutor told me to read the whole BNF AT LEAST twice. I know the BNF is a long and very boring book but doing this gives you many advantages:
a) you will know content better, if you've read it you will at least retain some information.
b) it helps greatly for the open book paper, many of us read things and forget it, but if you've seen it somewhere then you know where to look it up again, reading the BNF twice at least means your gonna know if something is in the BNF or not.
c) BLUE BOXES - In the BNF you'll come across some CSM information in blue boxes, this information more likely than not is something important and you should know it. My revision technique was to copy all of the blue boxes down so I can read through it quickly and remember these things without looking through the whole BNF.
d) while reading the BNF highlight the things that you think are important, especially figures such as oxygen percentages and uses, Cholesterol numbers, and important therapeutic concentrations ect.

2.Calculations
Be confident with calculations and learn how to time them.
Calculations can be a tricky thing and many people struggle with it, learn calculation well, cause you could get stuck on one and be looking at it for ages knowing you can get the answer while wasting alot of valuable time.

3. Practice, practice practice
Practice as many past exam papers as possible and disect the answers fully. Also remember to do timed practices so you can get you timing right.