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How long did it take you to study for BCPS? How did you approach it? Any advice?
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Janiceps said:
That is sick. how did you get 27/30 in domain 3 ? That is the part that killed me. I have been in practice for a while too. Any advice or tips on how to do well in domain 3 ? Thanks
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I was surprised I did as well as I did on domain 3. I did read through some things I'm not familiar with on the FDA site on IRB's. http://www.fda.gov/ScienceResearch/...ncesInformationSheetsandNotices/ucm113709.htm

Also good to know the P&P on how things get approved through P&T, etc.
http://www.ashp.org/DocLibrary/BestPractices/FormGdlPTCommFormSyst.pdf

And remember you are looking for the BEST answer... I read each one of these questions (domain 3 questions) twice and gave it some thought before I selected. I literally finished the first half of the test with only 2 minutes left... whew!. The second half I finished with only 15 minutes left.

Best of luck!
 
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kns said:
Hi,

I was just wondering what materials/websites or references you all studied for Med Watch, FDA, rules, regulations... I don't think these subjects included in the ACCP prep courses.

Thanks:)
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I passed with a pretty large margin, but my lowest score was also in domain 3. In addition to websites I would carefully look at the outline provided by BPS for domain 3 to better direct your studying. Also, if your hospital has a pharmacist med safety officer that person could be a great resource as well. If I had thought of these things before taking the test I think my score would have been a little higher.
 
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CA323 said:
I passed with a pretty large margin, but my lowest score was also in domain 3. In addition to websites I would carefully look at the outline provided by BPS for domain 3 to better direct your studying. Also, if your hospital has a pharmacist med safety officer that person could be a great resource as well. If I had thought of these things before taking the test I think my score would have been a little higher.
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1st world pharmacist problem... regretting you didn't pass by a higher margin in a thread full of people that failed...:D
 
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Moolman, Is there anyway I can purchase a copy of the Audio portion for the 2012 BCPS ACCP from you?

Thank you...
 
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OMG............
Did anyone outside of US receive the BCPS results yet?
The BPS posted a notification saying that it will be sent out by the week ending in 12/7...
So when will it actually arrive? I can't wait any longer :scared:
 
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I noticed that several of you all were concerned that the passing score was so much higher than in the past years, that isn't completely true. In the past the passing score was determined out of 180 possible points, since 20 questions on the test were being trialed and were not to be counted toward the final score, very similar to NAPLEX and MPJE. Last year there was an issue with this and BPS changed the policy and scored all 200 questions. Last year had two passing scores, I can not remember what they were, but the initial lower score out of 180 and the later (like January or February) higher score, similar to 122 out of 200.
 
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Is there anyone (in the US) that hasn't received their results yet? I am in Philadelphia and just got my mail, nothing yet.
 
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CritRx said:
I noticed that several of you all were concerned that the passing score was so much higher than in the past years, that isn't completely true. In the past the passing score was determined out of 180 possible points, since 20 questions on the test were being trialed and were not to be counted toward the final score, very similar to NAPLEX and MPJE. Last year there was an issue with this and BPS changed the policy and scored all 200 questions. Last year had two passing scores, I can not remember what they were, but the initial lower score out of 180 and the later (like January or February) higher score, similar to 122 out of 200.
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OMG, if that is true, that is really unfair. That is the worst thing you can do to a candidate.
 
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Janiceps said:
OMG, if that is true, that is really unfair. That is the worst thing you can do to a candidate.
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By having 2 scores, it was more fair. You had two chances to pass. I remember some people got follow up letters saying they passed cause they went to the 200 point scale. No luck for this year. It started at the 200.
 
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moolman said:
By having 2 scores, it was more fair. You had two chances to pass. I remember some people got follow up letters saying they passed cause they went to the 200 point scale. No luck for this year. It started at the 200.
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That person doesn't know what they are talking about. It is non-sense. I discussed this with BPS. Whoever that person CritRX or whatever is just Trolling big time. :mad:
 
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moolman said:
I passed. Let me give the counter argument about all the ramblings before. The BCPS is not in anyway a measure of how well of a clinical pharmacist you are. To put it into persepective, remember those idiots in your class that passed Naplex. The BCPS is harder but after taking the test you realize how random the questions are, I have more to write but I will refrain. It's luck of the draw too.... so you fools that barely passed... that includes me... it's all luck about what questions they asked on this specific test, this year... some get lucky, some don't.

I'm not a genius in anyway shape or form, average gpa and naplex score. I studied 2 months on weekends. I did the ACCP material and I even bought the ASHP material, which I can sell. Anyway, good luck to everyone else. All the West Coast. CA people got it in the mail today.

The envelop says BCPS after your name, it will say PharmD if you didn't pass.
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I studied hard--very hard--started in February and used every study material that crossed my path. On the other hand, my colleague spent a crash course Koda-Kimble for for 1 month to prepare for the exam. He even say he is a good multiple choice test taker.



I suck at multiple choice questions--they confuse me. During the Cal Board exam, when it dreadful day and half torture, I did very well with the essay part, but barely passed the multiple choice.

We are both professional clinical pharmacists. We both didn't do residency. We both passed the BCPS.

So my point is that passing this exam is multifactorial. If you are a good test taking and don't need to study all that much, may the force be with you. But if you know you pharmacy stuff but still need to study hard to pass a multiple choice exam, then that is fine, too. With or without the letters after your name doesn't identify you as smarter or dumber. It is how you are using your credentials that will keep those letters meaningful.

Good luck to those taking the exam next year.
 
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Janiceps said:
How much do they really change from year to year on these books ? will 2013 prep book look really that different ?
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Depends if there are updated treatment guidelines. For instance, the recent release of CHEST will probably be incorporated in 2013 materials (if it wasn't already in 2012).

I doubt it (2012 review materials) would be too much different (vs 2013) since JNC8 and ATPIV haven't been officially released. Not sure if the new guidelines will be released in time to be incorporated into the 2013 ACCP review materials. But time will tell.
 
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dopi said:
Would the BCPS help someone who didn't do a residency?
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Hey dopi, what do you mean by this? To sit for the BCPS you need to have completed an accredited PGY1 residency or have a "completion of three (3) years of practice experience with at least 50% of time spent in pharmacotherapy activities"
 
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awval999 said:
Bump. The test is one month away. Any SDNers taking the test this year? I'm on my 3rd and final go around on the accp book/lectures.
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I am taking the BCPS this year. they changed it all up. Now they are making candidates take it on different dates and different sites. what is up with that ?? What if the candidate that takes it in September talks to people who will take it in October ? How are they going to prevent that from happening ?
 
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hello all,
for those have taken the test already, is it enough to just review the book and audio/powerpoints? or is it recommended to actually go through guidelines for each disease state.

thanks in advance!
 
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oldpharmacist72 said:
hello all,
for those have taken the test already, is it enough to just review the book and audio/powerpoints? or is it recommended to actually go through guidelines for each disease state.

thanks in advance!
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from what I know, we just don't have the time to go over every guideline. there is just too much. If you really know your book and audio which is ALOT of material by itself, you should be ok. and do NOT underestimate the section with JCAHO rules and poilcies and procedures. that section is 10 % and it can make the difference just cause it is section that people sometimes forget to study.
 
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Does anyone have answers to ACCP pharmacotherapy CE questions? I am trying to figure out if I am getting the questions right
 
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awval999 said:
Bump. The test is one month away. Any SDNers taking the test this year? I'm on my 3rd and final go around on the accp book/lectures.
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What does it mean by STEM of the question ? BCPS help course saids, if you understand and read the STEM of the question and focus in, then you can always eliminate 2 of the 4 answers. IS this true ?
 
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I heard from a few people to start studying early into your residency since you're going to be learning a lot of the material anyways and take the BCPS the year you finish. Opinions on this?

My issue I guess is that I plan to do a PGY-2, so I would be taking it soon into it (if I match of course). There were some previous residents from my program that took it at the start of their PGY-2 and passed.

I guess I'm just wondering how feasible is this?
 
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GoldfishPharmD said:
I heard from a few people to start studying early into your residency since you're going to be learning a lot of the material anyways and take the BCPS the year you finish. Opinions on this?

My issue I guess is that I plan to do a PGY-2, so I would be taking it soon into it (if I match of course). There were some previous residents from my program that took it at the start of their PGY-2 and passed.

I guess I'm just wondering how feasible is this?
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I'm tentatively going to start getting out my BCPS book and studying. You should be my study buddy and bug me to study. I know I've seen timelines to start early in the spring.
 
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joetrisman said:
I'm tentatively going to start getting out my BCPS book and studying. You should be my study buddy and bug me to study. I know I've seen timelines to start early in the spring.
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That's what I've been seeing as well. I think I'm going to bite the bullet and do it. I need to order a book though. Sigh, so much money. I'll bug you to study if you bug me, but wait a few weeks. I'm up to my neck in projects. :p
 
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I am giving exam this week, hell too much tension anyone already gave exam please share your insight, PM me or whatever, greatly appreciated
Also willing to share all the 2013 materials including this years MOCK stuff after this week

8-10 hrs daily study, damm I will have TIA if its not over soon
 
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Well I took the exam today. Just a hodge podge of pharmacy "jeopardy" questions imo. Just a lot of plain trivia for the clinical part. I would recommend to review Stats and the difference between cost effectiveness/utility/minimization and IRB stuff. Almost think its pointless to "study" for the clinical part. It like studying for Jeopardy.

Such a wide confidence interval if I had to guess my score. [100, 150] sounds about right. Could be anything.
 
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I agree about the randomness!! I cannot even guesstimate my range score on the test. Praying passing is low!
 
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awval999 said:
Well I took the exam today. Just a hodge podge of pharmacy "jeopardy" questions imo. Just a lot of plain trivia for the clinical part. I would recommend to review Stats and the difference between cost effectiveness/utility/minimization and IRB stuff. Almost think its pointless to "study" for the clinical part. It like studying for Jeopardy.

Such a wide confidence interval if I had to guess my score. [100, 150] sounds about right. Could be anything.
Click to expand...

For the cost effectiveness/utility/minimization and IRB stuff, does the very end of Prep Course material help you in this area ? Not sure what to study for this part of the test ?
 
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I took the test yesterday. It seemed like they focused on a few areas more than others. I think that's the way these kind of tests go. They can't test your knowledge on every area so they get a smattering of a few areas to decide where you stand. Everybody gets the easy questions, it's how many of the tough or more in depth questions you get right that makes the difference in the final score. It seems just like I remember it from pharmacy school where studying extra hours gets you one or two more points right on the exam. The score you get in this exam should correlate directly to the amount of quality time you put into studying for it. After taking the exam, I have no question that putting in more time studying for it would give a higher score. There were a few things that you wouldn't be able to get correct from studying the study guide alone. You could definitely pass with just the information from the study guide, but there were a few questions that I just happened to know the answers to from work experience. For instance, I had just been reviewing an odd bug that had cultured out at work. It turned out that knowing the primary treatment for that bug got me one more answer right. I'd say luck would play some part in those few questions that have information that wasn't in the study guide. There were also some questions that seemed more opinion based. Those were just educated guesses for me based on what I thought would work best in the situation. I'm not sure if there is some sort of guide with the answers to those questions or not. I would not know where to look up the answers to those questions either. There were not a lot of those opinion based questions and they only accounted for a few points. In estimating how many I got right, I have a pretty big range that goes from doing very well and being pleasantly surprised to being sorely disappointed and missing the passing score by a few points.
 
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I also took the exam.

I am not sure how they got away with putting the exam in paper-and-pencil format until this year, since this was the first time it was offered on the computer. Much easier, IMO. And you def have plenty of time to take it, with time to review your answers, too.

As far as content, yes, I agree with the statements above. A lot of randomness. Some questions, I thought were NAPLEX-worthy (stupid easy, that is), and some I had no idea what the questions were getting at when it came to the regs questions. There were things I knew from seeing and engage in in my practice and doing active research with IRB experience, which definitely helped. Everyone told me to know stats, and that was the very first thing I studied and the very last thing I reviewed, with several rounds of review in between. Thankfully, the stats questions were straightforward for the most part- I am hoping that is what ends up boosting my score. And there were a ton (it does account for 25% of the exam). I don't think if I studied any more than I did that I would have performed better. The study guide was overall pretty good in prepping for the exam, and is enough to study from...no need to really pull out guidelines.

Here is to waiting 60 days. Apparently, the scores will now be sent electronically via email, so will probably receive sooner than snail mail. All that I am praying for is to have passed the exam.
 
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curt248 said:
I took the test yesterday. It seemed like they focused on a few areas more than others. I think that's the way these kind of tests go. They can't test your knowledge on every area so they get a smattering of a few areas to decide where you stand. Everybody gets the easy questions, it's how many of the tough or more in depth questions you get right that makes the difference in the final score. It seems just like I remember it from pharmacy school where studying extra hours gets you one or two more points right on the exam. The score you get in this exam should correlate directly to the amount of quality time you put into studying for it. After taking the exam, I have no question that putting in more time studying for it would give a higher score. There were a few things that you wouldn't be able to get correct from studying the study guide alone. You could definitely pass with just the information from the study guide, but there were a few questions that I just happened to know the answers to from work experience. For instance, I had just been reviewing an odd bug that had cultured out at work. It turned out that knowing the primary treatment for that bug got me one more answer right. I'd say luck would play some part in those few questions that have information that wasn't in the study guide. There were also some questions that seemed more opinion based. Those were just educated guesses for me based on what I thought would work best in the situation. I'm not sure if there is some sort of guide with the answers to those questions or not. I would not know where to look up the answers to those questions either. There were not a lot of those opinion based questions and they only accounted for a few points. In estimating how many I got right, I have a pretty big range that goes from doing very well and being pleasantly surprised to being sorely disappointed and missing the passing score by a few points.
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I absolutely disagree. Many of the questions were trivia based and without memorizing drug monographs, additional studying was not going to pay off.
 
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I was basically referring to the law of diminishing returns when I mentioned the test being like I remember in pharmacy school. For example, for a particular exam you would need to study about 2 hours to get a C and 20 hours to get the top score. This is the type of difference I was referring to. If you put in a lot more time, you would get a few more questions correct.
 
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awval999 said:
I absolutely disagree. Many of the questions were trivia based and without memorizing drug monographs, additional studying was not going to pay off.
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Trivia ? that is a odd way of putting it. They were very clinical and clinical application based. I wouldn't say trivia.
 
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I thought the test was very fair. There were a few WTF questions, which I would say were trivia-esk. The stats on the exam were more involved than i expected. The scenarios were more difficult to assess than any practice question. IDK, maybe I just didn't know my stats well enough lol. Guess we will see in two months.
 
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VCU07 said:
I thought the test was very fair. There were a few WTF questions, which I would say were trivia-esk. The stats on the exam were more involved than i expected. The scenarios were more difficult to assess than any practice question. IDK, maybe I just didn't know my stats well enough lol. Guess we will see in two months.
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So you thought the test was easy ?
 
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Did anyone had technical problems in the exam ?

my second part freeze like 5 times and I lost about 10-15 min in between which my proctor denied

just because of that stress I think I picked wrong choices on few question as I couldn't concentrate

Lord help now!
 
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mine never froze (the person next to me did) - the converstion sheet didn't work, but then I got the paper form, but never really used it. I had plenty of time - so losing 10-15 minutes would not have bothered me (I am a fast test taker - but that does not mean I thought it was easy). But I agree they should have given you that time back. WHen the compute would freeze between questions (for 4-5 seconds) the clock would stop. Are you sure the clock was still counting down?
 
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GoldfishPharmD said:
I heard from a few people to start studying early into your residency since you're going to be learning a lot of the material anyways and take the BCPS the year you finish. Opinions on this?

My issue I guess is that I plan to do a PGY-2, so I would be taking it soon into it (if I match of course). There were some previous residents from my program that took it at the start of their PGY-2 and passed.

I guess I'm just wondering how feasible is this?
Click to expand...

Do this. I did and very glad too. you learn most of the stuff in your PGY1. I just divided up the chapters and tried to read a chapter or 1/2 a chapter a day and made a study schedule based on that. Review stats again right before the test. I ended up scoring very high on the test. So after completing a pgy1 and then studying some you are good to go!
 
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MackandBlues said:
Do this. I did and very glad too. you learn most of the stuff in your PGY1. I just divided up the chapters and tried to read a chapter or 1/2 a chapter a day and made a study schedule based on that. Review stats again right before the test. I ended up scoring very high on the test. So after completing a pgy1 and then studying some you are good to go!
Click to expand...

Great thanks! This makes me feel better. All my preceptors told me to do it this way as well.

Did you or did anyone else here go to the review classes, either from ASHP or ACCP? I'm thinking about it, but it's so much money (for me anyways). :scared:
 
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GoldfishPharmD said:
Great thanks! This makes me feel better. All my preceptors told me to do it this way as well.

Did you or did anyone else here go to the review classes, either from ASHP or ACCP? I'm thinking about it, but it's so much money (for me anyways). :scared:
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Went to the ACCP review course. It was helpful but ALOT of material. Also took the test this year found the first party to be Ok the second part of the test was difficult. Did'nt think ACCP did a good job preparing us for the pharmacoeconomics part of the test. But will see when results come out good luck to all who tookthe test.
 
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RoadwayzDi Lari said:
Did anyone had technical problems in the exam ?
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This happened to me no less than 8-9 times during BCOP. The person next to me disconnected about 2 times.

Throughout the exam, I kept wondering whether or not I would be able to submit the entire exam at all; a colleague of mine who took the BCPS in the SF Bay Area said that her part 2 completely crashed and had to reschedule for a later week.

Of course these interruptions added unnecessary anxiety and frustration throughout the exam. I felt that these issues also challenged the integrity of the exams; imagine having answered 30-40 questions before you're asked to reschedule the exam for a later date. What's to stop individuals from looking up answers to questions that they had seen?

I won't be calling BPS anytime soon, but I made sure to leave them a 3000-word novel for feedback in the end :rolleyes:
I emphasized the need to iron out these technical issues, or to go back to the old paper/scantron model...

Thanksgiving can't come soon enough. So where do I sign up for next year's exam?
 
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