The Geeky Medics P rescribing Safety Assessment (PSA) Question Bank has been crafted to accurately reflect the style and format of the actual PSA, with all of our questions adhering to official PSA guidelines. Know how to prescribe gentamicin and how to use the gentamicin chart to determine next prescription timing

Every question in the PSA question bank has been written and reviewed by doctors, to ensure they deliver excellent educational value. Read carefully whether you are being asked to assess that the treatment is working/ beneficial or whether you are assessing for adverse effects – you will do different tests for each of these. The beginning of Appendix 1 in the paper BNF contains several tables of ‘drugs that cause…’. This saves you from looking up each drug individually when being asked which drug is most likely to cause ‘x’. For example: ‘What would you prescribed to treat acute pulmonary oedema secondary to left ventricular systolic dysfunction?’Typically, the prescription review section involves reviewing 6-10 medications and identifying which medications should be stopped or could be a cause of a clinical problem such as impaired renal function. Know which drugs are prescribed in MICROgrams (e.g. levothyroxine, digoxin) – these are often prescribed in MILLIgrams to catch you out.

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. Know your metrics! milligrams and millilitres, micrograms and nanograms. Know the difference and how to convert between them.

Key features of the PSA question bank

The information that is important can often be found in “important safety information” ( e.g Rivaroxaban not being effective on an empty stomach ), “patient and carer advice” (e.g advice regarding missed contraceptive doses) or “monitoring requirements”. Learn the common and serious side-effects and monitoring requirements for: ACEi, antidepressants, anticoagulants, bisphosphonates, HRT, insulin, methotrexate, and statins. 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. From 1 February 2022, unvaccinated individuals will not be able to apply for passes and/or access PSA Terminals.

There are often several correct drug/ dose/ route combinations which will receive full marks. Lower marks are given for suboptimal options. 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. Be aware that abnormal test results don’t always alter the management plan – for example, serum transaminases can be raised by up to 3x the upper limit of normal before statins should be discontinued. [Ref: https://bnf.nice.org.uk/drug-class/statins.html] Here you will be given a clinical scenario and asked to decide which treatment would be most appropriate from several plausible answers.However, if the questions asks “What IV treatment would be prescribed for a hypoglycaemic patient?” and you are unsure about what dextrose preparation to use, seach “hypoglycaemia” on the BNF under treatment summaries. This would then tell you that 10%/20% preparations are preferred over the 50% preparation. Application of Temporary Pass is available online. Please visit the link here to access the iPass Portal. To apply for the PSA Temporary Pass /PSA Pass, please complete this application form and submit it together with the following documents: PSA Temporary Pass 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.

Our advanced question bank platform allows you to filter PSA questions based on specialty and PSA question format. Questions will cover Medicine, Surgery, General Practice, Psychiatry, Paediatrics, Obstetrics & Gynaecology, and Geriatrics. Data interpretation made memorable and simple including ECG, ABGs, chest X-rays and basic bloods. Common traps highlighted throughout.

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You will not be allowed to bring anything into the exam other than a calculator, pencil, pen and the paper version of the BNF. You will have online access to the BNF and NICE guidelines throughout the exam. You will be given a clinical scenario and a list of 6-10 drugs the patient is taking, you will need to identify drugs that are contra-indicated (e.g. in renal impairment), causing the clinical picture (e.g. hypokalaemia, confusion, hypotension), or contain a dosing error. You don’t need to know everything, you just need to know how to find it. This is key! There are things you need to know – but you can be smart about learning what can’t be found on the BNF as long as you know how to locate the information you are looking for. For example what to do with a high INR can be found in the BNF. Enzyme inhibitors: AO DEVICES – allopurinol, omeprazole, disulfiram, erythromycin, valproate, isoniazid, ciprofloxacin, ethanol (acute intoxication), sulphonamides. Others: grapefruit juice, amiodarone, and SSRIs (fluoxetine, sertraline). The 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.