Pass the PSA

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The BNF can be used at any point during the PSA examination. Therefore, it is absolutely vital that candidates are confident with using the BNF prior to the exam. You are able to prescribe only one drug for each question. In the case where more than one drugs can be prescribed, some of them may be contraindicated which you definitely should not prescribe. It is also possible that more than one drugs are equally good and you can score full marks for that question by prescribing any one of them.

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Calculationsarounddrugconversions-againlookatthePASSthePSAbookonesandknowtheconversionof1%2%intosuitablecalculations.Somewillbebasicratios The question may ask you what is the monitoring required before starting the drug or how to monitor for beneficial effects or adverse effects after starting the drug. If your medical school provides teaching or practice sessions for the PSA, you should attend them. Be sure to engage well with the sessions. If you don't understand anything, ask your lecturer or friends. Most of the questions can be answered with the help of the BNF. However, as there are several drugs listed in each question, having to look up every one of them in the BNF will require a lot of time. To save time, your clinical knowledge is important. Refer to the BNF only if you are unsure. The PSA is undertaken by medical students in the early spring of their final year. It is an online exam that lasts for two hours and comprises 60 questions across eight-question formats. The total number of marks available is 200. Each medical school is allowed to choose whether or not they interpret the PSA as a summative assessment towards their medical degree.

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Starting from 2020, marks are no longer given for the date, time & signature, and you are not required to enter them in each question. This makes it more difficult to score well in this section. You have used the treatment summaries for the medical management of common conditions (e.g. Asthma) This section will task you with selecting the most suitable plan of monitoring for either beneficial or harmful effects of a newly started medication. The Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA) has been developed jointly by the British Pharmacological Society (BPS) and MSC Assessment. It is intended to be a valid and reliable tool allowing medical graduates and foundation doctors to demonstrate that they have achieved the core prescribing competencies outlined in Outcomes for graduates(originally published in Tomorrow’s Doctors). My ability to answer a lot of the questions was based on my knowledge from finals and my familiarity with Medicines Complete. Some of my friends got stressed about the PSA as an added exam on top of finals and the SJT but if you set aside a little time each week and review your pharmacology knowledge you are not only preparing for the PSA but you are also preparing for finals.

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Time yourself when doing the practice questions and always try to finish them within the time limit. This is because the amount of time provided to answer the PSA is rather short. It is also considered best practice for all F2 stand-alone doctors to undertake and pass the PSA. Any F2 doctor who has not passed the PSA before starting work is encouraged to undertake the exam during their F2 year. In this section, each question will list several drugs that have been prescribed, where you have to identify one or more of the drugs that are inappropriate or have a particular problem, such as adverse effects, contraindications, interactions with other drugs, ineffectiveness or dose error. Data interpretation made memorable and simple including ECG, ABGs, chest X-rays and basic bloods. Common traps highlighted throughout. The maximum dose of paracetamol is 1g QDS – common dosing errors will include 1g 4hrly or co-prescription of paracetamol and co-codamol.Each question carries 10 marks, where 5 marks are for the drug choice and 5 marks are for the dose, route & frequency. A perfect answer scores 5 marks, a suboptimal answer scores between 1 to 4 marks, while a wrong answer scores 0 mark. Note that the mark you get for dose, route & frequency cannot be higher than the mark you get for drug choice. Here you will be given a clinical scenario and asked to decide which treatment would be most appropriate from several plausible answers. The recommended reference books for the PSA are Pass The PSA, Get Ahead! The Prescribing Safety Assessment, MasterPass Student Success in the Prescribing Safety Assessment, Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine (10th Edition), Oxford Handbook of Clinical Specialties (10th Edition) and the textbooks for the specialties. Note that the questions in the MasterPass Student Success in the Prescribing Safety Assessment book are not well aligned with the PSA format, but it's still useful to do them as a practice. When identifying drugs with dose errors, note that in some cases the error is with the frequency rather than the dose itself. A correct dose with a wrong frequency counts as a dose error as well. The Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA) is an internet-based examination taken by students in UK medical schools during the final year. I took the PSA on 1 February 2019 and managed to pass it with a score of 72%, while the pass threshold was 63%. I took the PSA again on 3 February 2020 and managed to pass it with a score of 87%, while the pass threshold was 61%.Currently, I am a teaching fellow at Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia (NUMed).Here, I would like to share some tips for passing the PSA. These tips are intended for all medical students who are taking or retaking the PSA.