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Hello all! I do not usually make posts on online forums, but I found the SDN NAPLEX threads to be EXTREMELY helpful in preparation for my exam. Just found out today that I passed my NAPLEX on the first try after a couple months of worried studying and procrastination and thought I'd try to give back to the community in some small way.
Some background on me: I was an average student. Nowhere near straight A's. Studied for therapeutics exams the day before and usually ended up somewhere in the high-C to mid-B range. Retained very little long-term...
Worked in community pharmacy for one year (weekends mostly) and hospital pharmacy two years (weekends and one day per week every other week).
I mostly wanted to write this post to encourage anyone with severe anxiety leading up to the exam. Throughout the summer, I was very worried about taking an exam I'd seen REALLY good students fail or say was super hard. I gave myself all the time in the world to study, but didn't feel like I would ever be able to tackle the exam with confidence. But after taking the exam, I feel like I could have gone in with a lot more confidence or a more useful study strategy knowing what was ahead.
They say the exam is meant to test minimum competency. This is true. This does not mean that the questions are extremely basic. You will be asked straightforward questions from a wide variety of topics. I had no experience taking the adaptive form of the exam, but IMHO this format is much better suited for testing your ability to function as a practicing pharmacist. It seems to me to be a very practical assessment of how well suited you are to field questions from patients and prescribers. At a 6-hour run-time, I would characterize the exam as what you might expect from a "pretty busy" day answering questions as a real pharmacist. It feels in some way like a simulation of a real shift. With that in mind, I would encourage everyone to go in with the mindset that it will be a somewhat difficult day, but it is nothing you can't handle. All you can really do is try your best and think critically and practically about every question that comes up. If you survived the pharmacy curriculum and rotations, you should have all the skills and experience necessary to pass this exam.
Exam Specifics: It is said on here frequently and it is most definitely true - KNOW YOUR CALCULATIONS. I studied RXPrep calculations the night before and that was more than enough for me. Some of the RXPrep calculations are most likely outside what you might need to know for daily functioning, but if you can imagine having to answer it in practice, there's a good chance it will be on the exam. Obviously flow rates are important to know. As well as TPN calories/g or mL, CrCl, IBW, Corrected Phenytoin/Ca, mEqs, mmoles, etc... I spent a little TOO much time studying the ones you really don't use that often. BEE, pH, E values... But it is important to be able to perform them quickly and accurately.
Topics? It's hard to say. It really is all over the place. I was worried about getting questions on some topics in similar depth to a class exam. You most likely will not. The questions are not meant to trick you. It seemed to me that many could be answered by simply being familiar with treatments, side effects, interactions, etc. I bought the RXPrep question bank and, while it is very good practice, the questions are much more difficult than those on the exam. I would buy them again though for the peace of mind. If you can answer those with reasonable success, your knowledge base is likely well-enough developed for exam purposes. I took ID/ONC/HIV quizzes over and over. The others, I'd skim through. If I could get 50-60% on a topic without reviewing it right before, I'd consider that proficient enough for the exam.
ID was a pretty good chunk of my therapeutics-based questions, but they weren't particularly difficult. Know general coverage of ABX, and first line/second line options for some of the major/common disease states (be aware of patient allergies when taking the exam!). OM, HAP, CAP, SSTI, OIs, and STDs are the only ones I "really" felt confident about, and that was enough.
Know brand names of the top 2-300. HIV branded combos, HTN branded combos, etc. I would say the majority of drugs are referred to by their generic names on the exam.
All in all, I probably studied <150 hours total over 2 months - the bulk of which happened in the last week before the exam (8 hours/day the last 5 days). I typed notes over the first few chapters through ID, and I would say that helped, but it would be exhausting to do that for the whole book. Compounding questions can be tough regardless of how well you know it, but mine were relatively basic. RXPrep's biostats chapter is a good resource for basic competency - know RR, ARR, NNT and interpretation of results. Quick shout out of some other big topics: Resources, Immunizations, DM, HTN, Asthma/COPD, Thyroid, etc....
I would recommend taking the Pre-NAPLEX if you are considering it as it can be a confidence booster. I took it twice. Once three days before, once the day before - I know, not how it's meant to be used, but the second time really helped me feel ready for the exam.
If anyone has any questions, please let me know! This exam is "tough" but not hard. The questions are not "easy", but they are simple and straightforward for the most part. Some of the exam could be considered "luck-based" dependent on whether or not you've had experience with an oddball topic or had to look up a strange word on rotations. Work experience will help quite a bit in my opinion. If you failed the exam, DON'T DESPAIR! If you passed pharmacy school, YOU CAN DO THIS! Study the basics, and go in with confidence and under the assumption that you will be tested on a very wide variety of MOSTLY practical topics.
Hope this helped and GOOD LUCK TO ALL THE TEST-TAKERS! One last hurdle before achieving your dream!
Some background on me: I was an average student. Nowhere near straight A's. Studied for therapeutics exams the day before and usually ended up somewhere in the high-C to mid-B range. Retained very little long-term...
Worked in community pharmacy for one year (weekends mostly) and hospital pharmacy two years (weekends and one day per week every other week).
I mostly wanted to write this post to encourage anyone with severe anxiety leading up to the exam. Throughout the summer, I was very worried about taking an exam I'd seen REALLY good students fail or say was super hard. I gave myself all the time in the world to study, but didn't feel like I would ever be able to tackle the exam with confidence. But after taking the exam, I feel like I could have gone in with a lot more confidence or a more useful study strategy knowing what was ahead.
They say the exam is meant to test minimum competency. This is true. This does not mean that the questions are extremely basic. You will be asked straightforward questions from a wide variety of topics. I had no experience taking the adaptive form of the exam, but IMHO this format is much better suited for testing your ability to function as a practicing pharmacist. It seems to me to be a very practical assessment of how well suited you are to field questions from patients and prescribers. At a 6-hour run-time, I would characterize the exam as what you might expect from a "pretty busy" day answering questions as a real pharmacist. It feels in some way like a simulation of a real shift. With that in mind, I would encourage everyone to go in with the mindset that it will be a somewhat difficult day, but it is nothing you can't handle. All you can really do is try your best and think critically and practically about every question that comes up. If you survived the pharmacy curriculum and rotations, you should have all the skills and experience necessary to pass this exam.
Exam Specifics: It is said on here frequently and it is most definitely true - KNOW YOUR CALCULATIONS. I studied RXPrep calculations the night before and that was more than enough for me. Some of the RXPrep calculations are most likely outside what you might need to know for daily functioning, but if you can imagine having to answer it in practice, there's a good chance it will be on the exam. Obviously flow rates are important to know. As well as TPN calories/g or mL, CrCl, IBW, Corrected Phenytoin/Ca, mEqs, mmoles, etc... I spent a little TOO much time studying the ones you really don't use that often. BEE, pH, E values... But it is important to be able to perform them quickly and accurately.
Topics? It's hard to say. It really is all over the place. I was worried about getting questions on some topics in similar depth to a class exam. You most likely will not. The questions are not meant to trick you. It seemed to me that many could be answered by simply being familiar with treatments, side effects, interactions, etc. I bought the RXPrep question bank and, while it is very good practice, the questions are much more difficult than those on the exam. I would buy them again though for the peace of mind. If you can answer those with reasonable success, your knowledge base is likely well-enough developed for exam purposes. I took ID/ONC/HIV quizzes over and over. The others, I'd skim through. If I could get 50-60% on a topic without reviewing it right before, I'd consider that proficient enough for the exam.
ID was a pretty good chunk of my therapeutics-based questions, but they weren't particularly difficult. Know general coverage of ABX, and first line/second line options for some of the major/common disease states (be aware of patient allergies when taking the exam!). OM, HAP, CAP, SSTI, OIs, and STDs are the only ones I "really" felt confident about, and that was enough.
Know brand names of the top 2-300. HIV branded combos, HTN branded combos, etc. I would say the majority of drugs are referred to by their generic names on the exam.
All in all, I probably studied <150 hours total over 2 months - the bulk of which happened in the last week before the exam (8 hours/day the last 5 days). I typed notes over the first few chapters through ID, and I would say that helped, but it would be exhausting to do that for the whole book. Compounding questions can be tough regardless of how well you know it, but mine were relatively basic. RXPrep's biostats chapter is a good resource for basic competency - know RR, ARR, NNT and interpretation of results. Quick shout out of some other big topics: Resources, Immunizations, DM, HTN, Asthma/COPD, Thyroid, etc....
I would recommend taking the Pre-NAPLEX if you are considering it as it can be a confidence booster. I took it twice. Once three days before, once the day before - I know, not how it's meant to be used, but the second time really helped me feel ready for the exam.
If anyone has any questions, please let me know! This exam is "tough" but not hard. The questions are not "easy", but they are simple and straightforward for the most part. Some of the exam could be considered "luck-based" dependent on whether or not you've had experience with an oddball topic or had to look up a strange word on rotations. Work experience will help quite a bit in my opinion. If you failed the exam, DON'T DESPAIR! If you passed pharmacy school, YOU CAN DO THIS! Study the basics, and go in with confidence and under the assumption that you will be tested on a very wide variety of MOSTLY practical topics.
Hope this helped and GOOD LUCK TO ALL THE TEST-TAKERS! One last hurdle before achieving your dream!
