Category: Pharmacy

5 Things to Consider Before Pharmacy School

On August 16, 2022

Looking back at my younger self, I had a very narrow mindset while pursuing pharmacy school. While I don’t regret going to pharmacy school, these are things I wished I spent more time thinking about before starting.

The Why

“Why pharmacy?” is a question that presents itself over and over again, whether from friends and family, or school interviews. It can’t just be for the money. Is your “why” strong enough to carry you through this big commitment? Not everyone who goes to pharmacy school ends up in a career as a pharmacist. What are your life/career goals, and will a PharmD help you get there?

Cost

It’s easy to overlook the cost of tuition and other additional expenses once you get accepted into a program. Don’t be so easily convinced that it’ll be worth it based on the average pharmacist’s salary. (See my 5th point down below.) If you’re not applying straight out of undergrad, another thing to think about is giving up a full-time job to become a full-time student. Ask yourself whether this is a good return on investment for you. I went into pharmacy school intending to take out loans for all 3 years. It was hard to face these numbers upon graduation and while job searching.

Learning

There is so much to learn in a doctorate program. As someone who had terrible study habits in college, I definitely had to turn that around prior to starting pharmacy school. I never really thought about how hard it would be to keep up with everything in pharmacy school, let alone a 3-year program. I dealt with a lot of stress and struggled in a few topics, but my strong work ethic, interest, and supportive classmates helped keep me going.

Time

Time is going to be one of your biggest sacrifices. Time away from your family, friends, and yourself. Sure, you can just focus on your education, but a lot of people put in time for a pharmacy intern job, school organizations, and/or research. It gets so easy to get caught up with things happening in pharmacy school that you start to neglect your own needs and self-care sometimes. How will you prioritize your time as a pharmacy student?

Outcome

Your future career can be very different than what you imagine it to be. Most pharmacists don’t have regular 9-to-5 weekday schedules. You might only be offered part-time or per diem hours. You have to start as a floater pharmacist for a few years before getting that staff job. You get stuck working weekend and graveyard shifts as a clinical pharmacist. You have to take a pay cut for an entry-level job in the pharmaceutical industry. Are you flexible enough to deal with these very likely scenarios? While I knew the pharmacy job market in my area was very saturated, I didn’t think about how difficult it would be to land a job until I started applying.

For those of you on the pre-pharm path, I encourage you to really think about what you value and whether this is worth it for you.

Fellowship CV Tips

By Jodes

On May 25, 2022

In Fellowship

As someone who didn’t have industry rotations or any relevant experience during pharmacy school, I realized how hard it can be to format an industry fellowship CV. I am sharing tips and advice that I have learned from fellows and webinars, which helped propel me into the interview process.

Format

Everyone’s CV is going to look different. Whatever template you go with, make sure it looks professional and clean.

A CV should be ideally 2-3 pages. (A lot of my peers pursuing residency had 5+ pages in their CVs. That is not what you want to do for a fellowship CV.) Margins should be equal on all four sides (~1 inch). Use a common and easy-to-read font.

Header

first and last name
professional email, phone number, and LinkedIn profile (or address)

Footer

last name and page number

1st Page

education
relevant experience (work/industry rotations)

2nd Page

research (I bumped this up to page 1 because I didn’t have industry experience)
leadership
publications & presentations

3rd Page

teaching
awards/honors
certifications or specialized training

This is a generalized format. You don’t need to have those sections within those particular pages, but try to keep them in that order. You’ll have to decide how to organize your sections in terms of relevance and importance.

General CV Tips

Any little detail you add to your CV is fair game to be asked about in an interview
Start your bullet points with active verbs in past-tense (presented, developed, created…) and avoid pronouns (I, me…)
Your bullet points should describe the value or impact that you have contributed, not just a list of responsibilities
Add metrics to your bullet points
Remove certifications irrelevant to industry (like BLS and immunization delivery)
Be strategic with how you space things out so that your sections or bullet points don’t get cut off in between pages
Your CV is going to have similar experiences as all the other pharmacy students, so a professional summary in your header isn’t necessary
If you have in-person interviews, your CV copies should be printed 1-sided

I recommend having someone else look over your fellowship CV before submission, as this is your main ticket to proceeding into the interview process.

How I Passed the NAPLEX

By Jodes

On May 21, 2022

In Exams, Pharmacy

I took the North American Pharmacist Licensure Examination (NAPLEX) in the summer of 2021 and passed on my first attempt. I studied for 9 straight weeks up until my NAPLEX, but I began studying (on and off) for it since the beginning of my P3 final year. My school’s first time pass rate for 2021 graduates was 85% (so I guess I have to thank them for preparing me early).

If you’re planning to take the CPJE, check out my post here. Because I took the CPJE first, I had to prepare myself to be clinically strong. I was also well prepared for Top 400 brand/generic.

When I finished my exam, I had about 20 minutes left on the clock. I was physically exhausted as much as I was mentally drained. During my whole exam, I took one break. I wanted to take a second break, but I was raising my hand for at least 3 minutes with no one noticing me, so I decided to just continue on until I was done.

The NAPLEX is a 6-hour exam with 225 questions. Here is the content breakdown.

I won’t go over how much time you should spend studying or what clinical areas to focus on. If you saw the Reddit or FB posts, the weight of various clinical topics were different for everyone.

General Tips:

Read the question first. Patient cases will provide more information than what is required to answer the question. So read the question first and you’ll know what to focus on, rather than spending time looking at patient history, lab values, medication list, etc.

When answering the “select all that apply” questions, go through each answer choice and treat each answer individually as a true or false statement. Those questions will have more than one correct answer.

If you are weak in any area of calculations, make sure you practice them until you are comfortable. Calculations can take up more time than you think, especially if you’re not used to using the on-screen or basic calculator, so practice doing them with speed. While the types of math questions are spread out, you might encounter some types more than others.

Most math questions are going to require you to type in your answer. Pay attention to what they ask for when rounding. In a practice question, I misread the word “tens place” as “tenths place,” so that was something I paid extra attention to when I took the NAPLEX.

My resources:

RxPrep – NAPLEX book & practice questions

I studied on and off with this book during my last year of school. I watched most of the videos at 2x speed, but the information doesn’t go as in depth as the book (and sometimes the presenters go off tangent). I studied most topics at least twice, mainly focusing on the underlined information. Most of my percentage scores were 85 and above for the practice questions. When it came to calculations, I went through the book and online practice 3 times. I also made sure to memorize all the formulas.

This is how my topics were broken down when I studied throughout my final year:

6-Week Block	Chapters
8/17 – 9/25	calculations/biostats/compounding
9/28 – 11/6	renal & liver disease/immunization & travelers/infectious disease
11/9 – 12/18	cardiovascular disease/anticoag & blood disorders/EENT & skin
1/14 – 2/12	pulmonary & smoking cessation/endocrine/female & male health
2/15 – 3/26	special populations/pain/oncology
3/29 – 5/7	psych/neurologic/GI

2020-2021 year

I started studying the remaining chapters after graduation. Overall, the contents in the book prepared me well. However, the Medication Safety & Quality Improvement chapter did not prepare me for the types of questions I got on the NAPLEX. (If you know a good resource for med safety, share it in the comments.) I think the RxPrep practice questions were about the same as the NAPLEX in terms of difficulty.

RxPrep – Guideline/Drug Updates & Errata

If you are using RxPrep, check this page to see if there are any mistakes in your book. Look out for guideline updates even if you are using the current version of the book.

NABP Pre-Naplex

I was required to take this for my school, but it gave me a good overview of how the questions are formatted. I recommend trying out the on-screen calculator and looking at what lab values or formulas are provided.

I hope this provides some helpful information in preparing for the NAPLEX. Good luck with studying!

How I Passed the CPJE

By Jodes

On May 20, 2022

In Exams

I passed the California Pharmacy Jurisprudence Exam (CPJE) on my first attempt in the summer of 2021. According to the California State Board of Pharmacy CPJE statistics report between April 2021 – September 2021, the overall pass rate was 55.9%. I spent 8 consecutive weeks studying for that and NAPLEX collectively, and I took my NAPLEX one week after the CPJE.

The CPJE is a 2-hour exam with 90 questions. If you don’t know the breakdown of the exam or even anything at all, then start with the CPJE Candidate Information Bulletin.

Read everything carefully. I won’t go over the content outline and other details since it’s already listed there.

General Tips:

Clinically, you need to be as prepared as you are for the NAPLEX.

CPJE’s formatted questions are a lot shorter compared to NAPLEX, so any little information that is provided could be important for answering a question. If you are given a patient’s labs or medications list, take a closer look. You might have to use that information to see if there are any contraindications or drug interactions.

If you see a question asking for the “most appropriate” answer, you might encounter multiple correct answer choices, so you have to know how to pick the answer with the MOST COMMON/IMPORTANT side effect or know the KEY counseling point.

I spent A LOT of time memorizing brand/generic. If you’re given a question that uses the brand name of a drug you don’t recognize, how can you answer it correctly? I listed down below the resource I used to study brand/generic.

If you’re given a question that provides a drug and DOSING information, you need to know if it’s appropriate for a specific indication. For drugs that are available as Rx and OTC, you should know those dosage differences.

My resources:

tl;dr pharmacy

This site provides a good overview of clinical and law content. I did put some more focus into the topics listed there, but the exam can really test on any topic. Other important clinical topics I would add to that list would be bacterial infections, fungal infections, chronic heart failure, thyroid disorder, HIV, psych, and pain.

RxPrep – NAPLEX book & online practice questions

I’ve been studying on and off with the 2021 version all throughout my last year as a student. The videos don’t cover all the clinical details, so I focused on using the book. For the online practice questions, I aimed for percentage scores above 85 for all topics. As it got closer to my exam date, I focused on re-doing the questions I got wrong.

RxPrep – CPJE book, videos, & online practice questions

This book prepared me well for the law content. I watched all the videos while going over the book, and I aimed for percentage scores in the 90s for the practice questions.

RxPrep – Guideline/Drug Updates & Errata

If you are using RxPrep, make sure to check this in case there are guideline/law updates or errors in your book.

CPJE Secrets

I have mixed feelings about this resource because I found so many mistakes. However, having to cross-check references to fix these errors helped me remember the information. If you find it to be overwhelming, just focus on the Top 400 Drugs list. I made sure to have this whole list memorized before the test.

CPJE Candidate Information Bulletin (linked at the top)

I took the 22 sample CPJE questions and went back to figure out why the “most appropriate” answer was the best answer. Study the format of these questions and see how it can be applied to other clinical topics and drugs.

The Script

This is the CA Board of Pharmacy Newsletter. I only skimmed through a couple of old newsletters, mainly focusing on any law updates. I like how the information is laid out in an easy-to-read format. If you’re studying any law book that’s not up to date, then you should look at their most recent newsletter.

Community Pharmacy & Outpatient Hospital Pharmacy Self-Assessment Forms

This can be a helpful tool for reviewing the law portion. Most of this information is in the RxPreP CPJE book, so I only briefly looked over the forms.

I hope this provides helpful information. Good luck with studying and I hope you pass!