PSA exam

Hi guys
I just wanted to ask how many weeks did everyone spend preparing for the PSA and are there any good resources that you can recommend. I realised that my SJT and PSA are about a week apart and I have written finals 2 weeks after my PSA so feeling a bit stressed and tight for time now.

Any help would be much appreciated
Thank you

Reply 1

Squshy_Olorin

13

It's been 3 years since I did the PSA but don't think I committed too much dedicated time in the PSA, maybe a week. Mainly just did the PSA questions from Passmedicine which came with the medical finals question bank. Our university also did a mock PSA for us as well.

It's worthwhile knowing the common medications and doses for common conditions and emergencies. Also good to know the common nephrotoxic drugs, P450 inducers/inhibitors and antibiotics, monitoring for common medications. And lastly probably important drug interactions/contraindications for common conditions. If you're confident of all that, then you'll ace it.

Overall the PSA draws upon a lot knowledge you probably already at this point so majority of the questions won't be too challenging. It's main purpose is to ensure you can prescribe safely which majority can do by finals so I wouldn't fret over it too much. The SJT is more challenging and a more worthy investment of time!

Reply 2

kc91

OP

11

Original post by zhang599

It's been 3 years since I did the PSA but don't think I committed too much dedicated time in the PSA, maybe a week. Mainly just did the PSA questions from Passmedicine which came with the medical finals question bank. Our university also did a mock PSA for us as well.

It's worthwhile knowing the common medications and doses for common conditions and emergencies. Also good to know the common nephrotoxic drugs, P450 inducers/inhibitors and antibiotics, monitoring for common medications. And lastly probably important drug interactions/contraindications for common conditions. If you're confident of all that, then you'll ace it.

Overall the PSA draws upon a lot knowledge you probably already at this point so majority of the questions won't be too challenging. It's main purpose is to ensure you can prescribe safely which majority can do by finals so I wouldn't fret over it too much. The SJT is more challenging and a more worthy investment of time!

Thank you for this, your post is very helpful and I will definitely make sure to go over these areas. Do you have any recommendations as to how to prepare for the SJT, as my 2 exams are very close to each other? Thank you in advance for any advice you can provide as I haven't been able to start revision yet.

Reply 3

Squshy_Olorin

13

Original post by kc91

Thank you for this, your post is very helpful and I will definitely make sure to go over these areas. Do you have any recommendations as to how to prepare for the SJT, as my 2 exams are very close to each other? Thank you in advance for any advice you can provide as I haven't been able to start revision yet.

No worries. The SJT ultimately is one of those exams that you can't fully revise for as that's how it's designed to be. I think a month or two of revision is more then enough enough Try and not use too many different resources - I think two is a good balance, maybe three max. If you start using loads of resources, you'll find that they have conflicting answers for certain scenarios and you'll just confused yourself. The best resource is the mock that the SJT website has, and how you use it is up to you. I used passmedicine, oxford handbook for SJT and the mock to prepare, and attended a free SJT workshop run by my uni's med soc.
The main thing is to know the general gist of the different GMC domains. Then from that establish some principles to follow to make answering easier e.g. have a system for escalation - dealing with doctors and nurses are different. Remember patient safety is always first. Always try and to gather information first and talk to the person involved. Always try to maintain confidentiality where possible.
There's more principles but the above is just to give you a flavour. As you do questions and become more familiar you add in your own principles based on the GMC domains. Bear in mind this system may not work for everyone, but worked well for me and allowed me to score highly in the SJT!

PSA exam

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