Hi,
I’m starting my pre reg this year at a London hospital and I was wondering if you had any tips. I took a gap year so I’m really worried about not knowing a lot of the clinical stuff but I’m planning to do my best to revise.
Are there things you wish someone told you before starting your pre reg??
Thank you
Hi Anon,
Congratulations on getting such an amazing pre-reg!! You’ve done amazingly and I hope you love it. Also, apologies in advance if this gets super long!
Write evidences early. Print out a list of all the competencies you need to achieve (on GPhC website) and in your first week or two, try writing an evidence. You’ll likely have residentials (pre-pandemic, maybe now zoom?) where at the start they’ll give you a good evidence template. If not, I always wrote mine as a one sentence summary, then what I wanted to achieve from the situation, then what happened, then linked to competencies at the end. however, every tutor is different so make sure you ask them if there’s anything specific you need to do, and send one in early so you can get feedback and find out your tutor’s style. Better to learn this early than after you’ve written 50 evidences!
To start with, it’ll be rubbish. Learning how to dispense, learning how to order stock, learning drug histories. But these are a wealth of competencies so try to get them done! It is NOT a race of when you start clinical. Take your time, ask questions, look things up that you’ve never heard of. You won’t have time as a pharmacist so learn as much as you can now. Take a notebook and make notes of useful things.
One of my lecturers told me its never too early to revise. It probably is, but definitely try and attempt calcs once a month. Get yourself a gphc approved calculator now if you don’t have one and just try to do monthly calcs to get the hang of it. If they’re going badly, do them more often, and obviously near the exam do them more often. Don’t just neglect them all year.
Join the RPS. It’s expensive but worth it for free BNF, free MEP and 30 days of on track membership (start it 30 days pre-exam - v helpful with many questions), or discounts on longer on track memberships. Their OTC and POM to P guides are also amazing for community pharmacy stuff. Also join the PDA - they’re free and if you get messed about as much as we did, you’ll love them. They cared about us when the GPhC didn’t and did everything they could to help us. And they’re free so why not.
The MEP is your law bible. Treasure it, learn it, and hate it because it’s SO boring. There will be a question on vet prescriptions and the answer is probably five years of record keeping, unless it isn’t. You sadly do need to know all these things. Also, hospitals do not follow CD rules. Depending on your hospital, zopiclone may need a register. Oramorph is kept in the CD cupboard. The MEP/ your community friends are the only way you’ll ever know what drugs need storage/register/rx requirements.
Take any available learning opportunity. Shadow the pain team? hell yes. Go around with a diabetes nurse? ABSOLUTELY. (Diabetes nurses are bae and you can phone them for advice because they know so much more than I do about insulin). Acute oncology team are amazing. Go to GP land. I didn’t get to do much MDT shadowing because of covid, but if you can you really should.
If you want to make notes on the BNF, start at the start of pre-reg. It took me 9 months because it’s long and boring and awful. You absolutely don’t have to do this, but if you’re obsessive like me and need to know you’ve done everything imaginable to revise, don’t overestimate how long it takes.
In terms of resources, the top 100 drugs book (green one) is pretty good, and has good questions at the end too. Rutter’s community pharmacy book got me through uni and pre reg. I’m not saying you have to use them, but I personally found them useful. on insta, preregpharmassist and theflashcardpharmacist are amazing (especially the story quizzes by theflashcardpharmacist). Sureenaspeaks on youtube is also amazing if you want videos. Take care when using other people’s resources and also check them against up to date sources. Don’t do a mock with no answers, there’s no point.
Enjoy your life. Pre reg is hard. Go for walks, have tea with the others (or the whole department, or your tutor, if that’s their vibe). It is long and it is hard and you WILL be exhausted at times, no matter how much you think you won’t. Don’t stretch yourself too thin, it is okay to say no to some things. We’ve all been pre regs, we understand that sometimes you’ll have to spend the night writing your audit up (don’t stress about that too soon either!!)
That’s everything I can think of so far, please please do let me know if you have any more questions, and if I can help with anything throughout the year I'm here all the time so just let me know! Believe in yourself, but know the limits of your knowledge and skills. Good luck!!!! and most importantly, HAVE FUN!
**EDIT** you DO need to learn the national vaccine schedule, the OTC paracetamol dosing for kids and the OTC ibuprofen dosing for kids. They’ll give you a 4 year old child and you have to know that it’s 240mg paracetamol QDS. it sucks, but it’s easy marks if you learn it so be prepared. No one tells you that you need to know it but you absolutely do.
