The GPhC Exam September 2014 was so hard!!
The closed book was the toughest.
But why?
One question was asking us to find the most significant of interactions from a selection of 5, you go through the list and each of them is significant, it was one of those ones to throw you off the rail
The GPhC Exam September 2014 open book was not bad, there was one question about minor ailments which asked to distinguish between bronchitis croup, whooping cough for a 5yr old boy coughing up sputum at night.
I've noticed in september exams they like to ask about stability questions, mainly about recently prepared extemporaneous preparations, its anything within last 4 weeks, this time they asked if it is set by the British Pharmacopoeia.
In all, there were some ambiguous questions and non specific professional judgement questions an example of this was a question about an emergency supply for buprenorphine and Enoxaparine
Buprenorphine is a schedule 3, so no emergency supply can be performed. However, most pharmacists I have worked with over the years would not supply Enoxaparine as e/s using their professional judgement reason being that it may have been for a short time for prophylaxis dvt or in pregnancy. And the GP might have discontinued it. However, it is not a CD and should be supplied.
Therefore, different pharmacists would react differently in e/s of Enoxaparine
So feedback is necessary for this exam outcome to and for the future.
There were so many questions which were supposed to be open book, yet they were part of closed book paper examples: the labelling of drugs questions, like which label to be used for drugs x, y z, the questions that were on dementia, and questions on vaccination, the last question of closed book. there were so many others as well which by no means, anyone can answer by their current knowledge, no matter how well they have read the BNF.
Also there was an odd question on the strength of peppermint water concentrate Bp.
Im currently using this facebook group and the PharmacyCPA site, I think Ive passed.
Hey,
ReplyDeleteI am so glad I found this! I have been looking very hard to find someone to talk to about the exam because all my friends sat their exams in June.
I agree with you about the closed book section. I felt it was very tough. There were definitely questions in there that I feel required resources to comfortably answer.
One thing you haven't mentioned is the calculations section. I practised these day in and day out so I found them fair personally. However I would be interested to see how everyone else found them. How did you find them?
The open book exam was better but my oh my was time an issue!! I spent months reading over my BNF and bookmarking it to become familiar with where to access the information but I had to end up guessing about 15 questions as there were only minutes left on the clock!!! I felt like crying after it as I hate guessing. In practice, if I don't know the answer I wouldn't guess, I would do everything in my power to help the patient with the query.
Did you run out of time in any of the papers and if so how much were you forced to guess across both papers.
Exam results due in about 6 days now. I wish you and everyone else reading this the very best of luck. Look forward to hearing from you soon.