The Board selects question items from the item bank to create PSA assessments, supervises the work of the standard setting group and reviews the performance of individual items during summative assessments.

More than one drug may list the relevant ADR in its side-effect profile, note how common/rare the side-effect is and pick the drug for which the side-effect has the highest rate of occurrence. This will give you access to further information about the PSA, how the assessment is constructed and FAQs. The eight distinct prescribing areas: prescribing, prescription review, planning management, providing information about medicines, calculation, adverse drug reactions, drug monitoring and data interpretation, are delivered over two hours. Individual schools make the decision about specific dates available within an agreed national schedule.The PSA is divided into eight distinct sections that test different aspects of prescribing across a range of clinical contexts.

If the question states that you have to round your final answer to a specific number of decimal places or to the nearest whole number, you have to follow that instruction. You may notice that some of the practice questions for this section require using the BNF or clinical knowledge. Anaphylaxis is an adverse drug effect commonly tested in the PSA, so you have to know its management well. This section alone carries 40% of the total marks and is therefore the most important section in the PSA.Is there a list of the most common scenarios that usually come up on the PSA or a list on the most common drug interactions/adverse reactions etc. Access to the content of the BNF (British National Formulary) will be available as part of the assessment interface.

Do not memorise the normal range of values for investigations as it will be provided in the PSA questions. Our PSA question bank has been designed to support your PSA preparation and help you learn the common drugs and conditions which appear in the PSA. Top tip: Make sure you have a general idea of how to adjust medications based on plasma drug levels!Know what to do in the event of a missed contraceptive pill (this varies depending on the type of pill being taken). Even if among the 5 choices there is only one drug with one dose, route, frequency and duration, do not assume that everything is correct for that drug. A patient-controlled analgesia infusion pump, configured for intravenous administration of morphine for postoperative analgesia. Check the frequency drugs are prescribed at, methotrexate and some doses of bisphosphonates should be prescribed once weekly but may be prescribed daily to catch you out. When titrating drugs, for example, thyroxine to get TSH in range, you should usually make the smallest increment change possible.

Would also recommend they look at the Subreddit pages for doctors/medical students – plenty of people giving excellent top tips!Please note, if you pass the PSA at medical school and need to retake your final year, your medical school can decide whether they require you to retake the PSA or not. It is important to note that failure to pass the assessment prior to the commencement of the Foundation Programme will not impact employment. You will be expected to determine the most appropriate next step in management (which may be no change at all). The platform will identify your strengths and weaknesses, enabling you to target your revision for the prescribing safety assessment.