Pass the PSA E-Book

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Don’t make it too complicated. Remember, this exam is aimed at final year medical students and Foundation Year 1 doctors so the paper will not ask you to prescribe chemotherapy drugs or other specialist medications so don’t worry about learning those.

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. Don’t lose easy marks! As prescribing counts for a whopping great 40% of the marks don’t lose out on the ample marks available for your signature and the date! 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. Learn the common and serious side-effects and monitoring requirements for: ACEi, antidepressants, anticoagulants, bisphosphonates, HRT, insulin, methotrexate, and statins. You will be provided with a clinical scenario and some investigation results and tasked with determining the most appropriate course of action forward with regard to prescribing. (e.g withdrawing a medication, reducing its dose, no change, increasing its dose or switching to a new medication).Know what to do in the event of a missed contraceptive pill (this varies depending on the type of pill being taken).

Application of Temporary Pass is available online. Please visit the link here to access the iPass Portal. Typically, you will be provided with 5 options and tasked with deciding which treatment would be most appropriate in the management of the given clinical scenario. Sp aced repetition is a technique for improving the retention of information . It works by spacing out the intervals between review sessions . This spacing allows you to consolidate the information making it more likely you will recall it during the prescribing safety assessment.For Pass Application by post, applicants are required to come personally to PSA Pass Centre on the date of pass collection to have your fingerprint/Photo enrol onto the PSA Pass. For F1s, the PSA certificate does not have an expiry date as such. A PSA pass within two years prior to starting the F1 year is valid, but the pass does not expire during the F1 year (e.g. if a trainee joins the foundation programme in August 2022 and passed the PSA in February 2021, the PSA certificate would not expire in February 2023 before their F1 year is complete). If trainees are required to record an expiry date in their e-portfolio it is suggested that the last date of the F1 year is entered. Each question has 10 marks available (5 for the drug choice and 5 for the choice of dose/route/frequency). 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. You will be asked to choose an appropriate drug or intravenous fluid with its corresponding dose, route, and frequency.

You will be asked to determine: the most common or most serious side-effect of a drug, which drug is most likely responsible for an ADR, potential drug interactions, and management of an ADR. Every question in the PSA question bank has been written and reviewed by doctors, to ensure they deliver excellent educational value. You will be asked to make a drug dosage calculation; the question will contain all relevant numerical data as well as distracting data that you will not need. You will be given the units. Get familiar with the BNF. The BNF online is the best option if you are wondering, but it really helps with efficiency if you are already familiar with how to navigate it before sitting the exam.This section can be tight on time and it is not possible to search up every listed medication on the BNF. As such knowledge of common effects, adverse reactions and interactions of common medication is helpful. Here you will be given a clinical scenario and asked to decide which treatment would be most appropriate from several plausible answers. This section can be structured in a variety of ways,testing either on common adverse drug reactions, potential drug interactions or management of adverse reactions. 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. The treatment summaries can help in this section if you are not sure what drug should be used. However, having a good basic understanding of most conditions allows you to focus on looking up the appropriate drug based on your prior understanding which helps save time.