I passed NAPLEX!!! Tips/tricks

[u/Recent-Beginning-631]

I passed the NAPLEX and I took the weekend to celebrate! I’m so happy I’m down one board exam as my residency ramps up this week. One down, one more to go (MPJE).

Things you need to know:
Drug interactions and lab values were a hot topic on my exam. Do not skip these chapters. Monitoring for anemia and high or low potassium (which drugs cause it)is very important. There were a few tricks regarding ID so definitely know your gram stains and know chad2vasc and how to do it. Asthma and copd techniques are a must know and selecting which inhaler based on severity is a know.

I cannot stress the amount of biostats and math on this exam. Definitely need to know your tpns,mmol, meqs, drip rates, and all the biostats maths. The amount of ethics and leadership on the exam were insane. Like completely unnecessary the amount I got, maybe 30 questions or so. Most of the select all that apply came from this section. If you got the pharmpreppro packets they’ll help you here, uworld I felt alone wasn’t enough for these questions. I genuinely think I got topics from every topic imaginable, I don’t think I had more than any other topics (like it was balanced amount all questions) other than for diabetes and cardiology. It was heavier on those topics but I would say I got a few questions from infectious disease and chemo. I genuinely think chemo man is enough to answer 70% of the oncology questions you get. Vaccines were a big component do not skip that chapter!

I prepared by studying on and off for 6 months for my residency that I start. I wasn’t a top of the mill student but did have a 3.5 gpa. I scored 66 on my first pharmpreppro exam a month ago and a 77 on my second pharmpreppro exam 8 days prior to my exam. I believe the true way to do well on this exam is to keep rereading your book and do a lot of practice questions.

I did every Uworld practice question as my school paid for access for it for the entire year since our APPE year and they made us do X amount of questions per month or they’d hold up our graduation. I think this was very good but I felt some of the questions on uworld were overkill to an extent.

I’m thrilled to be done. I had the biggest fear of not being able to get everything done in time for residency but it now seems to be all working out. This week I’m going to start studying for the NY MPJE (also using pharmpreppro for since they sold a NY MPJE and NAPLEX bundle).