Naplex...flippin done and over with

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

EbonHawk

New Member
7+ Year Member
Joined
Sep 2, 2015
Messages
2
Reaction score
2
Hi everyone, I realize this post may not mean much since the supposedly newer, badder Naplex is suppose to take place in November. But for those of you still preparing until then, I wanted to share my experience. A little background info I was probably considered a "low" chi student instead of rho chi. I graduated with a 2.9 GPA and worked 30 hours a week throughout pharmacy at my retail job. I studied for about a month for about 4-6 hours per day and did math about 6 days before the test. Read through the book 3 times. First time I read through thoroughly, 2nd time skimmed, and 3rd only looked at the bolds and underlines. I didn't bother using 120 SDN, I thought RxPrep was sufficient for both studying drug info and math. Took the pre-naplex two nights before and got a 77. RxPrep 185 question test I scored a 68%. Whatever YOLO, I figured I would take my chances.

My first 4 Naplex questions started off tricky, I didn't have the slightest idea of what the answers were so I made a hopefully "good" guess and move on. 5th question was a simple math problem but I realized later on during the exam that I forgot to convert my units properly from grams to milligrams SMH so I gave myself a moment to freak out but told myself you got this homie, get yourself together. I started to reason a lot better with my patient cases and triple checked my math work. Had 2 questions on cancer, 8 HIV, ~10 ID, 3 compounding, 3 asthma/COPD, 3 immunization and the rest mixed bag of everything else. They asked me anything from side effects, MOAs, dosage strengths, DIs, drug substitutions. Had about 10 select all that apply. Math questions I got flow rates, CrCl, IBW, corrected calcium, mmol, and mEq...no biostats surprisingly. Overall, the math was easy and RxPrep was enough at least for my exam. There were several hard math questions I had no idea how to solve so I either chose a random multiple choice answer or input a random ballpark number. So that was about 19/25 math questions I probably got correct. It's not the end of the world if you screw up some math like some people say you when you have to be rock solid, but it certainly helps. I came out of the exam feeling terrible like everyone else, but ended up passing with a 95.

My advice (now that I can look in retrospect):

1.) Come in prepared but don't kill yourself studying. Make some time for your personal enjoyment too.

2.) RxPrep is your bible, plenty of the underlined items were tested.

3.) You won't know everything on the exam, but there will certainly be enough questions that you will blaze through. STAY CONFIDENT! They're just trying to make you feel like crap one last time before you practice. Read the questions first and refer to cases if needed, about 90% of time I didn't even look at the cases. Skim and make sure you see the drug allergies and lab values when necessary. Sometimes they can get you if you miss out on that.

4.) And you will feel like crap after you walk out, we all did. It's normal to go through your book and see what you missed, I missed more than a handful (maybe 50 or so) and still passed with a comfortable margin.

I hope this gives you guys some comfort and relief that you will be fine, good luck and see you on the other side.

Members don't see this ad.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 users
Top