NAPLEX® Test ©

OK, this is all rather complicated, but first of all let me cut and paste most of the announcement that came from USCIS on April 14th 2007: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) today conducted the computer-generated random selection processes on H-1B petitions...for the 65,000 cap. The approximately 163,000 petitions received on the first five days of the eligible filing period for FY 2009 (April 1 through April 7, 2008) were labeled with unique numerical identifiers. Petitioners whose properly filed petitions have been selected for full adjudication should receive a receipt notice dated no later than June 2, 2008. USCIS will return unselected petitions with the fee(s) to petitioners or their authorized representatives. As previously announced, duplicate filings will be returned without the fee. The total adjudication process is expected to take approximately eight to ten weeks. For cases selected through the random selection process and initially filed for premium p

Ok, where to begin with "what happened next" in this story? Well, let me try and remember because its been quite a while. First of all I could see from the UCSIS website link that I had received the all important receipt number. That is what you want to get in the lottery as it means you have been successfully drawn from the big pile. It doesn't quite 100% mean you have been accepted, but it's about 99.999% good. The only way that you would fail from being fully accepted would be if they discover an error, omission or legal problem with your application. Since the lawyers are paid a goodly sum to get it right, you wouldn't expect an issue, but I guess with 165,000 applications there might be one or two that hit an issue - although perhaps they can still be corrected. Once the authorities have confirmed the application is acceptable, they send the employer an email saying this, and the employer then sends a load of documents to the applicant which they have to l

If you want to move your whole house, your wife, and your 3 children to America, and you want to make life easy, there is one simple answer - TAKE A LOT OF MONEY! I imagine that many of you who follow me to America will be young, single and carefree, and will simply take one suitcase of possessions and a few hundred dollars in your pocket, you'll arrive on October 1st as the visa allows, and you'll stay in a cheap motel until you get your first pay slip. Well, that's probably what you may think will happen, but there are a variety of issues that will make life complicated even for people like you that don't have to organise the whole mess of problems that arise when you are shipping 62 boxes of goods, and need to arrange schooling for 3 kids, need a proper house to live in, or need stuff like cellphones, cable, landlines and insurance policies. So whatever your personal situation is, and however easy you think it is going to be, read on and find out what problems wil

This entry is going to tell you about the problems around getting a Social Security Number, a "FULL" intern license, and the timeline for actually starting work and getting paid. I am writing this on August 4th 2008, prior to these events actually happening to me, but can at this point explain what I think will be the timeline of events given what I currently know. When I actually apply for real I shall probably give you a whole different set of stories but even what I know now is worth telling. After you are told that your visa/work-permit starts on October 1st, you may think that your employer is expecting you to turn up for work on that date in a shirt and suit, ready for enrollment in to the company and a lecture on health and safety in the workplace and a work schedule for the month ahead. They wont, and you shouldn't expect that to happen either. When you filled out the forms for the H1B visa application I would imagine most, if not all employers, would have requ

Please note, any comments I receive that have the posters email in I will delete for their own benefit. October 15th 2008 I am now sitting at my computer in America and have loads of things to write, even though very little has actually happened. However, I shall start by going back to getting my visa at the US embassy, and in the next blog write what has happened since I have been state-side. When I got my letter confirming I was selected in the H1B visa lottery it said I needed to go to my US consulate and have my passport stamped with the work visa (all my family had to have their passports stamped, but only adults over 18 needed to be present at the consulate thankfully). There were two basic forms that needed to be filled out ONLINE and PRINTED OFF and taken with you to the consulate. One was for the family, and one for each individual. These are fairly lengthy forms and you need to be careful you don't die from boredom filling them out. However, you must do it, and you

I entered the US of A under my work-permit visa on September 22nd 2008 and on September 23rd I walked in to my nearest Social Security office (contrary to my employers suggestion that I wait until 1st October) and applied for a Social Security Number (SSN) - the all important number I needed to apply to the California Board of Pharmacy for a full intern license, without which I couldn't start work. It took about a week to get a confirmation letter saying they confirmed that I had applied, and another 2 weeks to actually receive the card containing my number. I then wrote to the Board of Pharmacy informing them of my SSN and about 2 weeks later they wrote back saying they needed an actual copy of the card! I immediately emailed it to them and got an automated email back which said that the board were concentrating on processing pharmacist registrations, and would not be dealing with intern queries until October 20th. I then posted them a hard copy just to be sure, and just after t

I've just finished my first month of work and what have I discovered that's worth sharing with you? Well, not that much really. The bottom line is that the core function of pharmacy is in essence still the same, namely prescriptions come in, a pharmacist gives a cognitive perusal over the possible clinical correctness of the medication and checks that the drug, label and name, etc are correct, and the medication is handed out to the patient with the option of a consultation should it be wanted. I imagine this process is more-or-less the same worldwide. However, there are vast, enormous, gigantic differences when it comes to the specifics. Firstly, their are various differences with the systems with respect to the physical processes. I can only compare between the US and the UK, but in the UK the process is simple - one person takes the prescription in, hands it to the pharmacist or dispenser, the pharmacist signs it off, and someone hands it out. There is usually only one comp

A couple of points to make in this posting. Firstly I want to give a list of some of the pharmacy boards since I happened to have found a whole list of them and I might as well add it as a resource for you in case of need, so here it is: STATE BOARD OF PHARMACY WEBSITE California http://www.pharmacy.ca.gov/ Connecticut http://www.ct.gov/dcp/cwp/view.asp?a=1620&Q=273844&PM=1 Delaware http://www.dpr.delaware.gov/boards/pharmacy/index.shtml Iowa http://www.state.ia.us/ibpe/ Idaho http://bop.accessidaho.org/ Illinois http://www.idfpr.com/DPR/default.asp Indiana http://www.in.gov/pla/pharmacy.htm Kentucky http://pharmacy.ky.gov/ Massachusetts http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=eohhs2subtopic&L=5&L0=Home&L1=Provider&L2=Certification%2c+Licensure%2c+and+Registration&L3=Occupational+and+Professional&L4=Pharmacy&sid=Eeohhs2 Maryland http://www.mdbop.org/ Maine http://www.maine.gov/pfr/professionallicensing/professions/pharmacy/inde

Hi once more to you all. I am now about 8 months into my internship and am starting to get ready to sit the Naplex and CPJE. The main topics for today's post are: 1. Getting some hospital hours (California requirement, or States?) 2. Visa renewel 3. Applying to sit the Naplex - things that need to be done ahead of time. 4. Naplex/CPJE books/resources/online info etc etc etc 1. If you aren't doing your internship in California I really don't know what additional requirements your state board of pharmacy will require of you over and above completion of your hours, but in California the one issue that has gradually become a real nightmare for me has been the need to complete "some" hours in a hospital pharmacy. I think it may have been possible to use any previously gained hours done in my home country to cover this requirement, but unfortunately I have never worked any hours in a hospital at all, so I couldn't get around the problem that way. Also, although I

August 23rd 2009 A couple of new issues have come up since my last entry worthy of a mention before I finally get to take the Naplex and California Law exam (CPJE) - so I thought I'd add them now in case I forget later. Let me start with the process I had to go through to get my hospital intern hours done. Firstly, as I have already mentioned, I had to pull a few strings to get to meet with the pharmacy manager. When I met her she was extremely helpful, partly I guess as a favor to our mutual friend, but also perhaps because she was also a foreign graduate and remembered having to get her hours done too. So don't think you can just walk in to your nearest hospital and present yourself for internship hours. Find a connection quickly, at the start of your internship, and start the ball rolling. Having got my foot in the door I then had to come back on another day and meet the HR department. This was also an extremely helpful person, who understood my needs and appreciated I j

September 27th 2009 The first thing that I >SHOULD< have done would have been to have gone to the California Board of Pharmacy website and printed off the application form (here) to apply for the exams. In that paperwork is one section to go the nearest finger-print analysis company (I used my local UPS) - and in California there are loads of places that offer this service. The important point to think about is that this can be done at any time, and need not wait until just before you apply to sit the Naplex and CPJE, and can often be one of the delaying factors - so at some point towards the end of the 1500 hour internship get this done, but don't leave it to the last minute. The second think that needs to be done is to then send off the rest of the paperwork to the CABP. This can't be done until your have completed both your hospital and community hours and had signed affidavits to say so. Once that has been collected then you can send the paperwork off. Finally, you

Tuesday 15th October 2009 I went to bed just after midnight and set my alarm for 4.30am to squeeze in a few extra hours of last minute cramming before the exam, as I hadn't quite finished reading all the scraps of paper and books and notes and websites and links and downloads that I had wanted to get through before I sat the exam. In the end I just couldn't wake up that early and re-set my alarm for 7am instead. Before I went to bed I had made sure all my documents were at hand - my US drivers license, my UK passport and my US Social Security Card - all with the exact and precise same version of my name in. I also had the address stored in my Sat Nav, and my clothes laid out for what I had been forewarned would be a somewhat cool room temperature. 7am and I wake up, get ready and go. The exam was due to start at 8am, but the paperwork said you had to be there 30 minutes before to go through the necessary checks. The place was a bit tricky to find, but as I walked towards the

Monday October 19th 2009 The CPJE contains, according to the content outline which you can read on pages 10 and 11 of the full outline here , or specifically here , there are 90 questions, of which 15 are "test" questions that aren't scored, but included for potential use in future exam use, and the other 75 questions are divided equally between: 1. Provide Medication to Patients 2. Monitor and Manage Patient Outcomes 3. Manage Operations They have example questions here and some more example questions here for you to familiarize yourself with the exam style and content. I cannot say this any more clearly, but there is good reason to look very carefully at these example questions! Now, for all the websites, books, downloads, links, hints and suggestions I may have received and can suggest to you, NOTHING is as close to the real exam as I found those example questions were. What I THOUGHT the exam was going to feel like, was something like the example questions I

Wednesday 28th October 2009 Before I get to my result I just want to review for a moment the thought processes that have been running through my head since I sat the Naplex. Firstly, and i've probably said this already, the exam was HORRIBLE! It was the most difficult exam I have sat since I was at University back in the late 1980's, and I felt like I was totally unprepared for what came up in the exam. I felt that I had basically learnt all the wrong stuff. Although I read the whole of APhA, and I endorse that book as the best study guide that I had, it really didn't help in terms of answering the questions that came up on the exam, or to put in more correctly, it failed to add focus to the correct information worthy of studying over the other sections or areas that weren't as exam-important. Thus, I spent my revision time, for example, reading the chapter on hypertension, or diabetes or HIV, which are all absolute must-learn sections, but the questions that appeare

Sunday October 8th 2009 Ok, boys and girls, are you sitting comfortably? Good, then I shall begin. I sat the CPJE on September 19th 2009, 6 days after having taken the Naplex. Given the first exam had basically ripped my heart out and made me eat it for breakfast, I wasn't confidant walking in to the CPJE exam, and was amazed that I left feeling so happy with what I had experienced whilst taking the exam. How could it be that everyone was so petrified of the CPJE when it was the Naplex, and I apologize for having to use this perfect expression, that was such a bitch. Lets look at some stats which are available to view in even greater breakdown here . NAPLEX Fail 2.4% Pass 97.6% So, overall, for the Naplex, 97.6% pass the exam! How can that possibly be? That exam was DEVASTATINGLY difficult. The pass mark must be something like 30%! One additional point to note for the Naplex is that the scaled score has a pass mark of 75, but a MAXIMUM ATTAINABLE of 150. Keep that in mind.