BCPS Fall 2017

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sld14

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Anyone else sign-up to take the BCPS exam in the Fall?

I am starting to get nervous about this exam already. I have the 2017 ACCP materials and have been sitting in on the VA BCPS review series.

How is studying going for everyone/how are you mastering the material? Thoughts from those who have taken the exam previously?

Thanks for any tips!
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Hi everyone! I was wondering if anyone could share the audio with me? I took the exam in 2015 and passed. I just want to listen to the audio to see if there's anything new. Thanks in advance! Good luck everyone! Know your biostats/study designs! And know your policies and procedures!! Go through all the chapters and listen to the lectures. Make sure you know the 1st line therapy to the diseases. KNOW YOUR BIOSTATS and STUDY DESIGNS!
 
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BCCCP here. Graduated in 2013, went to straight into the ED. I took the review course at the beginning of the year (meh) and have the recommended Biostats book. Im signed up for 9/28 :eek:
 
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sakigt said:
BCCCP here. Graduated in 2013, went to straight into the ED. I took the review course at the beginning of the year (meh) and have the recommended Biostats book. Im signed up for 9/28 :eek:
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Signed up for 9/28 too, that was the only date I had to choose from in my city. Getting nervous!
 
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sakigt said:
BCCCP here. Graduated in 2013, went to straight into the ED. I took the review course at the beginning of the year (meh) and have the recommended Biostats book. Im signed up for 9/28 :eek:
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Just curious which recommended biostats book did you purchase? I was wondering if you guys had any Biostats quick review guides or anything.

Thanks!
 
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Llalalalalala said:
Does anybody have a mock exam from last year? Please message me
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Any luck on getting a mock exam? The mock exams online are super expensive and we already spent $600 on the test haha. Anyone willing to help me out with a mock exam to test my comprehension?

Thanks!
 
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sld14 said:
Anyone else sign-up to take the BCPS exam in the Fall?

I am starting to get nervous about this exam already. I have the 2017 ACCP materials and have been sitting in on the VA BCPS review series.

How is studying going for everyone/how are you mastering the material? Thoughts from those who have taken the exam previously?

Thanks for any tips!
Click to expand...
Are there any good You tube videos on Study design? Any other good resources for mastering that material?
 
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sld14 said:
Anyone else sign-up to take the BCPS exam in the Fall?

I am starting to get nervous about this exam already. I have the 2017 ACCP materials and have been sitting in on the VA BCPS review series.

How is studying going for everyone/how are you mastering the material? Thoughts from those who have taken the exam previously?

Thanks for any tips!
Click to expand...
yeah e-mail me we can discuss in detail about the exam [email protected]
 
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Hi All,
I signed up for the Fall exam but have not been able to study. From what I read, everyone is advising to study at least 4 months in advance. What are you thoughts on this? TIA
 
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UTAlum14 said:
Just curious which recommended biostats book did you purchase? I was wondering if you guys had any Biostats quick review guides or anything.

Thanks!
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There is a really good UMSLE step 1 biostats review that I used from youtube that was SOOO good. It made the stats on the exam super easy (I passed Spring 2017), and would highly recommend it over the ACCP one (although I will say, the 2016 ACCP stats review was much better than previous years). The youtube link for part 1 (there are 4 parts total) is
 
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How seriously are you guys taking these test questions for the Policy, Legal, History etc? Is it truly as indepth as these questions suggest? I mean, I can answer the questions having immediately read the material but sheesh.
 
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I know the Biostats/Study Design is SUPER important...but for those of us who will not be able to finish all chapters of the book or remember so much info :) - what would you all recommend as the other topics that are of utmost importance, based on the probable volume of questions from that topic that will beon the exam. Any thoughts? Experiences from past exam takers?
 
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Thanks so much for the stats videos! I also dug out my biostat notes from pharmacy school.
 
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thanks for the video link! my test is scheduled for 10/5. as for policies/procedures, i found the 2017 ACCP lectures reaaaaaally tedious and hard to focus. can anyone provide any insight on what to focus on the most for policies/procedures?
 
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SDN Fam has gotten me this far in life (from pre-pharm to pharm school to apply for residency to matching to passing the Naplex/CPJE), please don't fail me now! :help:

I have the BCACP this Saturday and am literally freaking out right now as I am crunched for time! From reading through the past forums, people have recommended focusing on BIOSTATS, ID, HIV, Cardiology I and II, Regulatory, Pulmonology, etc. No matter how many times I have gone through the ACCP workshop/ slides, I do not feel ready. I've been out of school for too long and I feel like I've lost my test-taking/study mojo. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
 
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CrewThanh said:
SDN Fam has gotten me this far in life (from pre-pharm to pharm school to apply for residency to matching to passing the Naplex/CPJE), please don't fail me now! :help:

I have the BCACP this Saturday and am literally freaking out right now as I am crunched for time! From reading through the past forums, people have recommended focusing on BIOSTATS, ID, HIV, Cardiology I and II, Regulatory, Pulmonology, etc. No matter how many times I have gone through the ACCP workshop/ slides, I do not feel ready. I've been out of school for too long and I feel like I've lost my test-taking/study mojo. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
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I am feeling the exact same way - mine is next Thursday and I am freaking out. I just don't know what to do to study anymore or focus on! Really reading through cardio and biostats intensely is what I am doing the next few days. Someone else at work told me know first line for everything. >__>
 
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CrewThanh said:
SDN Fam has gotten me this far in life (from pre-pharm to pharm school to apply for residency to matching to passing the Naplex/CPJE), please don't fail me now! :help:

I have the BCACP this Saturday and am literally freaking out right now as I am crunched for time! From reading through the past forums, people have recommended focusing on BIOSTATS, ID, HIV, Cardiology I and II, Regulatory, Pulmonology, etc. No matter how many times I have gone through the ACCP workshop/ slides, I do not feel ready. I've been out of school for too long and I feel like I've lost my test-taking/study mojo. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
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Dont forget the questions are not meant to be tricky. The test may be long but its straightforward. Dont get worked up on the test day.
Also always try to take away 2 out of 4 choices on questions you are unsure of thus increasing your changes to 50/50
 
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I caved and bought the ACCP practice test - if anyone is interested in splitting it next me know.
 
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Bumping this up since I'm taking my BCPS renewal next week. Good luck to everybody else taking the test!
 
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Ugh. I'm taking this exam in a week for the first time. I have been studying on and off for a year using ACCP but don't feel like much is sticking. Focusing on stat for now. Anyone already taken the exam? Any words of advice? My practice area is SUPER narrow, like less than 1/2 of one section of the BCPS review from ACCP so there's a lot of pharmacy I don't use on a day-to-day basis. Trying not to freak out...any direction on where to focus is greatly appreciated. Please and thank you!

Good luck to everyone taking this beast!
 
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How did it go for those of you that already took it? I would be very grateful for guidance on where to focus. I'm pretty strong on ID, and I don't think I can really hold all of ACCP or even half of that review in my head, so I'm now honing in on stat, reg, cardiac, HTN/Lipids, and DM since those are our favorite diseases in the US. Any other suggested domains to hit really hard?

On a side note, I was also told that brand names are not on the exam. I had been spending a stupid amount of time the past few months trying to commit both generic and brand to memory (like I had to for the NAPLEX), so hopefully no one else wasted as much time as I did on that.
 
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PFMB said:
How did it go for those of you that already took it? I would be very grateful for guidance on where to focus. I'm pretty strong on ID, and I don't think I can really hold all of ACCP or even half of that review in my head, so I'm now honing in on stat, reg, cardiac, HTN/Lipids, and DM since those are our favorite diseases in the US. Any other suggested domains to hit really hard?

On a side note, I was also told that brand names are not on the exam. I had been spending a stupid amount of time the past few months trying to commit both generic and brand to memory (like I had to for the NAPLEX), so hopefully no one else wasted as much time as I did on that.
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Better than I expected (but note that I was taking the renewal exam, which is only half as long as the initial certification). Your target areas look good to me; pay special attention to your stats and regs! And you're correct, brand names are not on the exam; go generic or go home.
 
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Took BCCCP today. Overall felt pretty good. Flashing back on mistakes made but overall felt good. Attended BCPS review in Feb (meh), read through all the packets then rewrote them in notebooks. Got a little too close to crunch time and had to rewrite the last few books over 3 days which killed my hand/butt from sitting. Switched to watching the review lecture then rewriting which I should have done from the beginning. The recommended Clinical Biostats book was overwhelming and confusing and did nothing but stress me out. I took a hail mary and watched those youtube videos posted above and literally got every stats question from that video but 3. 1 I knew, 1 I was pretty sure about and I think I missed the last one.
 
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Thanks for sharing. How was the time allowed for the exam? did you find yourself rushing through the exam or was the time fairly liberal?
I have not studied several topics because the volume of material is just so much, and I recall only a miniscule fraction of what I have studied. So heaven knows what I will do in the exam. The only thing I am confident about is stats, but that cannot be enough to pass. Glad you feel pretty good overall.
 
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doingit4mykid said:
Thanks for sharing. How was the time allowed for the exam? did you find yourself rushing through the exam or was the time fairly liberal?
I have not studied several topics because the volume of material is just so much, and I recall only a miniscule fraction of what I have studied. So heaven knows what I will do in the exam. The only thing I am confident about is stats, but that cannot be enough to pass. Glad you feel pretty good overall.
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BCCCP is like 55% clinical and 45% extra crap. Felt more like 65% clinical to me. I work in the ED so had to learn all the crazy ICU stuff. All the stuff I do all the time (ie: tpa for stroke, PE) was like a duck in water. Contraindications, time frame issues, no problem. If I was an actual ICU Pharmacist this probably wouldn't have required as much studying on my part. Stats were a lot of the "crap" and random questions for the other non-clinical packets. Literally random.
 
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Oops. I just realized that you took the "BCCCP" and not the BCPS. Have you also taken the BCPS or is this your first certification exam? Glad that you sound confident, I wish you all the best.
 
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Thanks for the feedback, all. I just finished the ACCP Mock exam yesterday and scored right at the "average" of all test takers for that exam~62%. Yay. Not sure what that means. But from what I've gleaned from the mock:

1. Stat is the MOST black and white questioning format I saw on that exam. No trickiness so I plan to reinforce my understanding of that area.
2. I studied for a year on and off, there's no way I can know the random crap these people want me to know on this exam re: pharmacotherapy. There were at least 15 questions I had no idea on and couldn't even narrow down the answer choices.
3. Regulations...wow, I really don't know this very well, especially CMS measures. Not as black and white as stat, but way more "memorizable" than some of the random PT stuff showing up. Time to work on regs.
4. Dosing dosing dosing. I don't know about you all, but I suck at dosing in things I don't routinely work with, which is a lot of stuff. The ACCP exam had a lot of tricky dosing questions. No idea if the BCPS is just as bad.

That said, I finished in 2.5 hrs without rushing, so I think it is reasonable to mostly take your time on the real exam if it is anything like the mock.

Another thing I didn't realize about the format is that you can "flag" questions to come back later and skip around and revisit questions unlike the NAPLEX. This is a good thing IMO.

So other than stat, regs, knowing Cardiac, ID, pulmonary and DM...onward!
 
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Holy smokes.....
Just took the bcps for the first time today...what a humbling experience.
I feel like the exam was half stats/regs/publication questions.....the "pharmacotherapy" piece of the exam was sorely missing, I felt.
I wish I spent more time on the the last 2 chapters of the ACCP study materials (the recorded lectures were really difficult to stay awake through). I just got my arse handed to myself.
Not feeling so confident.
Hope everyone else passed! I guess I have next year.
 
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I took it yesterday and I agree. I feel like the exam had maybe 40 clinical questions and the rest were regulatory, publication, research, policy and stats. The clinical questions seemed pretty straight forward and very unlike any of the practice materials (I bought the ACCP test).

I used High-Yield Med Reviews and, while the stats portion was really good, none of the other topics were really covered at all. It was mostly clinical. While I feel like I know a whole lot more than I did about some topic areas, I feel like the materials were way deeper than was needed for the test. I feel like if you studied policy and procedure and stats and no clinical at all and were somewhat competent at your profession, you could pass. Vice versa, I feel like a competent clinician and I didn't study publications, regulations, policies, research, etc and I feel like I probably failed.
 
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what about economic/patient reported outcomes and kinetics? are those worth looking at for those who took the exam already?
 
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There were some pharmacoeconomic questions, but only basic ones. I don't remember a single kinetics math type problem, but there were some kinetics related general questions.
 
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Circling back. I took the exam yesterday, and I felt there was a large portion of it that was pharmacotherapy. I calculated that of the total 175 questions, I felt totally confident i knew the answer to about 35 questions. There were about 15 that I had no clue whatsoever, and the other 125 were a mix of sort of mostly knowing to not really but being able to narrow it down a little. Very little dosing questions, but definitely tons of regs, stat, and publication, some trial design and some random educational methodology questions—

Did anyone else feel like they would read a question, know the answer and then see it was nowhere to be found in the options? It was like—screw first and second line treatments, let’s see if you know THIRD line!

All in all this exam was weird and totally without a doubt completely unlike the ACCP mock exam.
 
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PFMB said:
Circling back. I took the exam yesterday, and I felt there was a large portion of it that was pharmacotherapy. I calculated that of the total 175 questions, I felt totally confident i knew the answer to about 35 questions. There were about 15 that I had no clue whatsoever, and the other 125 were a mix of sort of mostly knowing to not really but being able to narrow it down a little. Very little dosing questions, but definitely tons of regs, stat, and publication, some trial design and some random educational methodology questions—

Did anyone else feel like they would read a question, know the answer and then see it was nowhere to be found in the options? It was like—screw first and second line treatments, let’s see if you know THIRD line!

All in all this exam was weird and totally without a doubt completely unlike the ACCP mock exam.
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Thank you for validating my feelings about the exam. I left the testing center thinking.....WTF just happened??

I feel a bit better about it by now, knowing that I'll be better prepared if I have to take it again. I didn't expect the seeming randomness of some of the questions and options, and know now that what the BPS is looking for is practitioners to be able to think "outside the box" and use the knowledge that we have as springboards to arrive at the best answers for off-the-wall kind of issues that we may run into in real life.....

...or so I'm trying to make myself feel better...

I still really do not feel good about my performance on the exam, because I'm not sure if what *I* thought were best answers were what the test-makers thought the best answers were.

Similar to situations where you might see two experienced clinicians make two different recommendations for the best treatment for a very complex patient, I guess.
 
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sakigt said:
This waiting thing sucks.
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I know what you mean! I keep checking this forum on the daily to check on how others are doing with the post-traumatic TEST disorder. Seems a bit quieter than most other years. ONE more MONTHish to go!
 
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CrewThanh said:
I know what you mean! I keep checking this forum on the daily to check on how others are doing with the post-traumatic TEST disorder. Seems a bit quieter than most other years. ONE more MONTHish to go!
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LOL i'm trying to forget about the traumatic experience as much as possible. Hearing the stories from my colleagues who already got their BCPS, it sounds like we might have gotten a different test than what they took.
 
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cg80 said:
LOL i'm trying to forget about the traumatic experience as much as possible. Hearing the stories from my colleagues who already got their BCPS, it sounds like we might have gotten a different test than what they took.
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Different in what way?
 
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PharmD500 said:
Different in what way?
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I was told there should have been more stats questions (I prepared a lot for stats, expecting at least 25% of the exam to be stats-based.....and maybe got 10 questions?), and more clinical questions. I don't think I'm the only one who felt they expected more clinical questions, based on feedback from one colleague who took the exam with me and some feedback on this post.
 
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cg80 said:
I was told there should have been more stats questions (I prepared a lot for stats, expecting at least 25% of the exam to be stats-based.....and maybe got 10 questions?), and more clinical questions. I don't think I'm the only one who felt they expected more clinical questions, based on feedback from one colleague who took the exam with me and some feedback on this post.
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I think there should have been more clinical questions, but based on the bcps breakdown, it was supposed to be 55% clinical, 25% stats, and 20% regulatory. I knew not to expect the clinical questions to exceed 55% of the test, even though I think it should be 80%.
 
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PharmD500 said:
I think there should have been more clinical questions, but based on the bcps breakdown, it was supposed to be 55% clinical, 25% stats, and 20% regulatory. I knew not to expect the clinical questions to exceed 55% of the test, even though I think it should be 80%.
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I honestly don't think they were even 55% of the test. I did a running tally on the first part of the exam, and it leaned more to non-clinical (I didn't break down the other domains, I really only started because I was pissed the first question was non-sense, but I don't remember what it was now). After they wiped my white board at the break (which I didn't expect), I stopped tallying so it's skewed (it seemed like the second half may have been more towards 50% clinical).

On the other hand, the practice exam had a lot questions that were classed "clinical" that I wouldn't classify as clinical (they had some that asked to pick a study design or a reference classed as clinical), so it's quite possible that some of the ones I classed as non-clinical is how they get their 55%.
 
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A101Dal said:
I honestly don't think they were even 55% of the test. I did a running tally on the first part of the exam, and it leaned more to non-clinical (I didn't break down the other domains, I really only started because I was pissed the first question was non-sense, but I don't remember what it was now). After they wiped my white board at the break (which I didn't expect), I stopped tallying so it's skewed (it seemed like the second half may have been more towards 50% clinical).

On the other hand, the practice exam had a lot questions that were classed "clinical" that I wouldn't classify as clinical (they had some that asked to pick a study design or a reference classed as clinical), so it's quite possible that some of the ones I classed as non-clinical is how they get their 55%.
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They wiped your board clean at the break?! Thats horrible! I probably would have started crying.
 
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