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Hi guys, I have not been on this forum since I started Pharmacy School but I wanted to tell you about my NAPLEX experience and what I would have done differently.
First and foremost, I was a technician prior to starting Pharmacy School, and that helped out a lot. There were quite a few questions about brand/generics that I know my technicians can answer. These brand/generic combinations are for very commonly prescribed drugs too, not a medication that is rarely prescribed.
I thought the therapeutics part of the exam, far and away, was a walk in the park. Without going into specific drugs or questions, I can tell you this much: A great deal of questions are about monitoring parameters, patient counseling points, common drug interactions, and which drug would cause X to happen or which drug would complicate a certain disease state. Honestly, if your practical experience whether it be in rotations, hours on the job, etc did not prepare you for this, you are a *****. Yes, prep books provide most if not all of these key points, but they would probably present it in a way that you would probably skim over as to think they are not important details.
The math portion was more complicated, and I am not as good in math as in therapeutics. There were multiple choice math questions (which were typically easier), then math questions where you had to supply the answer (some were easy, some were hard). Know milliequivalents well, let me repeat, know milliequivalent problems well. There are also variations to these problems, so I would try to study all possible variations (ie, sometimes you have to solve for ml, mEq, grams, etc).
Put simply, studying prep books for therapeutics based questions was an absolute waste of time for me, as I did not know how simple these questions would be. In pharmacy school, common questions were three and four part answers (of which drove me crazy), but NAPLEX just asks the obvious and it is always a one part answer!
Math - Practice as much as you can. Had I done things differently, I would not have studied therapeutics not nearly as much (maybe one day or two at most just skimming over disease state key points, contraindications, when to use/not to use Drug X). I would have practiced math a lot more, but that is just me.
If you paid attention in class and rotations and have legitimate pharmacy experience, don't waste much time on therapeutics because you already know it. All in all, I would give at most 2 weeks to studying for this exam, with at least 50% devoted to calculations. Studying for months is a waste of time unless you have ZERO pharmacy experience and did not ever step foot in a pharmacy.
First and foremost, I was a technician prior to starting Pharmacy School, and that helped out a lot. There were quite a few questions about brand/generics that I know my technicians can answer. These brand/generic combinations are for very commonly prescribed drugs too, not a medication that is rarely prescribed.
I thought the therapeutics part of the exam, far and away, was a walk in the park. Without going into specific drugs or questions, I can tell you this much: A great deal of questions are about monitoring parameters, patient counseling points, common drug interactions, and which drug would cause X to happen or which drug would complicate a certain disease state. Honestly, if your practical experience whether it be in rotations, hours on the job, etc did not prepare you for this, you are a *****. Yes, prep books provide most if not all of these key points, but they would probably present it in a way that you would probably skim over as to think they are not important details.
The math portion was more complicated, and I am not as good in math as in therapeutics. There were multiple choice math questions (which were typically easier), then math questions where you had to supply the answer (some were easy, some were hard). Know milliequivalents well, let me repeat, know milliequivalent problems well. There are also variations to these problems, so I would try to study all possible variations (ie, sometimes you have to solve for ml, mEq, grams, etc).
Put simply, studying prep books for therapeutics based questions was an absolute waste of time for me, as I did not know how simple these questions would be. In pharmacy school, common questions were three and four part answers (of which drove me crazy), but NAPLEX just asks the obvious and it is always a one part answer!
Math - Practice as much as you can. Had I done things differently, I would not have studied therapeutics not nearly as much (maybe one day or two at most just skimming over disease state key points, contraindications, when to use/not to use Drug X). I would have practiced math a lot more, but that is just me.
If you paid attention in class and rotations and have legitimate pharmacy experience, don't waste much time on therapeutics because you already know it. All in all, I would give at most 2 weeks to studying for this exam, with at least 50% devoted to calculations. Studying for months is a waste of time unless you have ZERO pharmacy experience and did not ever step foot in a pharmacy.
