PSA Practice Papers

On the PSA website there are 4 practice papers. Paper C seemed considerably more difficult that paper A, B and D. Is this the general consensus?

Reply 1

Letournel

Original post by JOO93

On the PSA website there are 4 practice papers. Paper C seemed considerably more difficult that paper A, B and D. Is this the general consensus?

Everyone i have spoken to has seemed to agree with this. My mark dropped by 15 compared to the others.

Reply 2

Pertie

Yep, paper C was ridiculous.

Really hoping the real thing is more like D - i felt vaguely confortable with that one!

Seems like such an odd exam, more about how quick you can pull out obscure bits of info from the BNF rather than how well you can actually prescribe...

Reply 3

dgrog

How did everyone find today's exam?

Hard

The website crashed at our uni which added to the stress of what seemed like a hard exam > :frown:

Reply 6

Woody.

Original post by Pertie

This is my main problem with it. What is the exam trying to test? Currently it seems to err too much on 'How quickly can you search the online BNF?' rather than prescribing knowledge. Beyond emergencies, there is always more than two minutes to work out and write a prescription, so I think it is only going to encourage errors.

Reply 7

adsyrah

Original post by Woody.

Plus it flies in the face of what we're taught. Our mantra has always been to know your limits and, if in doubt, check with someone.

It's not reasonable for us to know about obscure side effects and review 8 meds for prescription errors, contraindications and interactions in 2 minutes.

Reply 8

dgrog

I agree. Thought the exam today was harder than the mocks.

Reply 9

Sarky

I'm glad we didn't have all of that crap to do on top of finals!

Reply 10

trektor

Original post by adsyrah

regarding interactions, using the medicines complete BNF if you just type in all of the drugs with a space in between each one then click on the interactions tab then you should get a quick list of interactions with the red ones being the more serious ones. Our tutor said that the red ones will usually be the answer, but haven't sat the PSA yet myself

The other stuff, not as quick to find out

Reply 11

Pertie

Original post by trektor

I'm 99% sure that function isn't enabled for the actual exam - I think the videos on the PSA website explain it.

Reply 12

trektor

Original post by Pertie

I'm 99% sure that function isn't enabled for the actual exam - I think the videos on the PSA website explain it.

I just watched the video on the PSA website (using the British National Formulary) and that video refers to the drug interactions tab at the top, i.e. the one in the following list of tabs:
dashboard>publications>product updates>drug interactions> help

That drug interactions tab is for Stockleys drug interactions which it says we do not have access to and is something I don't have access to with my NHS athens account.

However I am referring to is you type in more than one drug in the search bar and then you select interaction from the smaller list of tabs which contain:
full text>drugs>treatment summaries>medicines>interactions>all publications

If you select interactions on there then I do have access to that using NHS athens and I was fairly sure that this is separate to Stockley's drug interactions.

My tutor is one of the standard setters for the PSA and runs the prescribing programme at HYMS and advises us all to use this function in the PSA. I will double check with him but I believe the two different interaction tabs are different and the the second one I mentioned is available.