Prescribing is a fundamental part of the work of Foundation Year 1 doctors, who write and review many prescriptions each day. It is a complex task requiring knowledge of medicines and the diseases they are used to treat, careful judgment of risks and benefits of treatment, and attention to detail. If that section is not there, then you should start by identifying the answer choices with correct information and eliminating those with wrong information, using your clinical knowledge. The BNF is often helpful in this, but you will waste time if you look it up for every one of the choices. Then, you have to use your judgement to determine which of the correct information is the most appropriate to be given to the patient. A PSA pass is considered valid for two years. An FP 2022 applicant who has taken and passed the PSA before February 2021 will be required to take it again by their foundation school. The treatment is often tailored to individual patients and depends can potentially depend on factors such as gender (e.g duration of UTI treatment for men is 7 days), drug history and allergies. The questions in the Planning Management, Providing Information, Adverse Drug Reactions, Drug Monitoring and Data Interpretation sections are in the Single Best Answer (SBA) format. For each question, there are 5 choices of answers where you have to choose the one that is the most appropriate.

Each question in this section will consist of a scenario where a patient is being prescribed a particular drug and you will be asked to decide on what information should be communicated to the patient. BNF Logo [image on the internet]. Accessed 06/07/2012. Reproduced with kind permission of the British Medical Association and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. Know where to find things e.g. often important information to communicate about a drug is in the ‘patient and carer advice’ section. I commonly used this section during the exam.If the question states that the patient in the case does not want a particular type or form of drug, you should avoid prescribing that if possible. If you still prescribe it, you will not be able to score full marks. I spent roughly 2 hours each weekend from September to February revising my pharmacology notes and using the books mentioned to become familiar with the exam. This helped me to prepare both the PSA and my finals in February. After that I spent 4-5 hours per day for the 3 weeks prior to the PSA consolidating my knowledge and completing the practice papers. Get familiar with the BNF (both online and paper versions) and know where to find things as it isn’t always obvious or easy. For example, converting opioid doses is in the palliative care summary, HRT is in the sex hormones summary, and high INR management is in the oral anticoagulants summary. It is made up of 8 sections totalling 200 marks. The time given to complete this is 120 minutes. Questions will cover topics such as Medicine, Surgery, General Practice, Psychiatry, Paediatrics, Obstetrics & Gynaecology, and Elderly Care. Based on the information provided, you have to decide whether to stop a drug, decrease the dose, increase the dose, prescribe another drug or make no changes.

Rememberitstheinformationthatislikelytocausethemostproblemtothepatient.Althoughsimilaranswersmaybepresent,choosetheinformationthatislikelytocausePATIENTHARMifnototherwisementionedegstartingapatientonOCPandtheriskofDVT/PEmustbementionedwouldbeyourtopinfoThe Prescribing Safety Assessment (PSA) is a pass/fail assessment of the skills, judgment and supporting knowledge related to prescribing medicines in the NHS. The PSA assesses the prescribing skills of final-year medical students and is based on the competencies identified by the General Medical Council outlined in Outcomes for graduates (originally published in Tomorrow's Doctors). These competencies include writing new prescriptions, reviewing existing prescriptions, calculating drug doses, identifying and avoiding both adverse drug reactions and medication errors and amending prescribing to suit individual patient circumstances. The content of each item is relevant to the prescribing tasks expected of an F1 doctor, i.e. the questions refer to ailments and drugs that graduates are likely to be dealing with in year one of the Foundation Programme.

After finishing the practice questions, find out if your answer for each question is correct. You should understand the reasoning behind every correct or wrong answer. Delivered jointly by the British Pharmacological Society and the MSC Assessment, the PSA is an online exam designed to assess your knowledge, skills and judgement of prescribing medicines within the context of the NHS. This includes writing, reviewing and amending prescriptions, calculating drug doses, and identifying adverse drug reactions and medication errors.

How to pass the PSA exam

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In the real assessment, the post-assessment review process considers every unrecognised answer and all credit-worthy answers are added to the mark scheme to enable marks to be credited. As an F1 you will often be asked to prescribe fluids so memorise the NICE guidelines for maintenance fluid: 25-30mL/kg/day of fluid, 1mmol/kg/day of sodium, potassium and chloride, and 50-100g/day of glucose. Newly qualified FY1 doctors will write and review many prescriptions each day, however, prescribing is often considered one of the most challenging areas. In addition, prescription errors are commonly observed in practice. Therefore, the PSA was introduced to ensure junior doctors are safe prescribers with the aim to improve clinical practice and reduce the number of prescribing errors.I found the actual exam harder than I expected, though manageable. I fortunately had time to spare at the end of the exam to review some of my answers, though I know many of my peers ran out of time and year on year this is a common complaint. There were many questions which I wouldn’t have answered correctly had I not known how to navigate Medicines Complete, so I do think a keen awareness of this resource is pivotal for passing the PSA. The questions will cover ailments and drugs that you’re likely to encounter during FY1 across Medicine, Surgery, Elderly Care, Paediatrics, Psychiatry, Obstetrics & Gynaecology and General Practice. How many questions are on the prescribing safety assessment? Take into consideration specific information you are given about a patient when deciding which piece of information is best – e.g. are they of childbearing age? Utilise the “Interaction” section for the medication on the BNF. This will give a list of all interactions with the particular medication you are interested in. Again, use the ‘Ctrl F’ function to speed up your search.