NAPLEX® Test ©

And on with the blog...

2008-04-21T15:59:00.000-07:00

PLEASE IGNORE THE DATES GENERATED BY THE BLOG SITE - I HAVE TO PUT THE DATES IN REVERSE ORDER FOR THE BLOG TO READ FROM TOP TO BOTTOM, SO I JUST ENTER RANDOM DATES THAT ARE PREVIOUS TO THE OLDER POSTS. THE ONLY DATES APPLICABLE ARE THOSE MENTIONED BY ME, NOT BY THE BLOGSITE

I have realised that it is VERY difficult to contact me via this blogsite so am taking the risk that I don't get inundated with spam by giving out my email, but I know SO many people want to email me with their questions and queries and I really do want to help each and every one of you as much as I can, so if you want to email me please do via SCURTISCO at AOL dot COM (If I write it the usual way then I know spambots will trove my address and I really will be sorry!). But please, feel free to email me with any queries, concerns, questions, worries and so on you may have.

This Blog the third in my series which follows the story of how I came to be an American Pharmacist. The story is told in full through:

http://fpgee-test.blogspot.com/
http://h1b-lottery.blogspot.com/
http://naplex-test.blogspot.com/

Which I hope should make life a lot easier to understand for anyone trying to follow in my footsteps, since I found the process to be agonizingly painful every step of the way, and could have killed for a resource like this!

Anyway, I shall begin this section in earnest once I have heard the good news that I was successful in the H1B lottery of April 2008, and will report here of whatever comes next in the journey to becoming an R.Ph.

Farmacyst

The information gradually seeps out....

2006-12-20T04:40:00.000-08:00

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 processing, the 15-day premium processing period begins today (April 14), the day of the random selection process.
USCIS has “wait-listed” some H-1B petitions, meaning they may possibly replace petitions chosen to receive an FY-2009 cap number, but that subsequently are denied, withdrawn, or otherwise found ineligible. USCIS will retain these petitions until a decision is made whether they will replace a previously selected petition. USCIS will send a letter to the wait list petitioners to inform them of their status
USCIS expects that for each of these wait-listed petitions, it will either issue a receipt notice or return the petition with fees within six to eight weeks.
--
OK, so here's my take on the above:

First of all they gather all the files collected during the five day window. They number them 1 to 163,000 and then let a computer randomly select 65,000. These 65,000 are divided between fast-track who will be informed within 15 days of their final status (namely that their paperwork was filed correctly, that they have not been flagged as having any convictions or perversions, and that the US Government have granted them a visa), and those that were non-fast-tracked will be told their final status by 2nd June. But, I believe, all of these 65,000 will have been given (well, their sponsor will have received for them) a "receipt notice", which they can use to track the status of their case on the USCIS website.
A further number of files will be have been retained as reserves to replace any of the 65,000 that aren't finally taken, but may not be told for 6-8 weeks, with the remainder being returned to the sponsor.

So, either you get a case number, you get your file returned, or its retained for 6-8 weeks as a stand-by, but stand-by's will get told they are in the stand-by group.

I got a RECEIPT NOTICE.

My sponsor told me I could follow the progress of the file on the USCIS website.

I BELIEVE I HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFUL IN THE 2008 LOTTERY.

Farmacyst

The long hot summer....

2006-12-19T12:19:00.000-08:00

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 look through VERY carefully. Lots of the forms need to be filled out ONLINE and printed off (they can't be printed off THEN filled out) and an interview at the stated US Consulate needs to be arranged for the passports to be stamped for the whole family.

Now, since my situation is a little different I can raise some other points of note - as always because I have had to work this stuff out the hard way.

I got the OK from the H1B lottery during April 2008. I had a contract for my business in England which had a 3-month exit clause, which meant if I worked the full 3 months (ie May, June and July) I would be able to pop over to America from 1st August to set up my residence over there prior to starting work from 1st October. However, the terms of the visa (work permit) are such that once the passports have been stamped YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO ENTER THE USA UNTIL 10 DAYS PRIOR TO THE START DATE OF THE WORK PERMIT. That meant that if I got my visa stamped I couldn't go to the States to set up my house until 1st October, when I assumed I was going to be starting work. Hmmmmm. However, I was allowed to go in the US under a normal "holiday" visa, if I hadn't had my interview with the Consulate, but then I would need to get back to England, get the passports stamped and then go back to America again. All seemed a bit too complicated.
So my wife and I had a little chat and we decided that the best plan of action was to see if I could close my current contract with just 2 months notice, and go to California for a long "holiday" from 1st July, then return to England end of August to say our goodbyes there, sit around for a month doing nothing there, and finally making the permanent move from the 21st September, 10 days prior to the start of the work permit, as was allowed.

I put the request in, and after much humming and hawwing from the other party in my contract I was allowed to close my contract a month early. Thus from July 3rd I have been in California getting things organised - which has been (of course) a lot more complicated than expected, and worthy of sharing in the next blog entry, so that you can appreciate the problems that may arise when you, hopefully, make your move to the USA.

Farmacyst

How to move to America....

2006-12-18T13:01:00.000-08:00

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 will be about to make life much more complicated, and more importantly much more expensive, than you might otherwise have imagined.

In England I decided to sell my house in anticipation of moving to America (back when I thought the process was going to be an easy one) back in February 2007. So I had been in a rented house for well over a year by the time I actually found out for sure when I really would be making the move. The original lease was for a year, with a six-month opt-out, but after the first year the tenancy was held on a rolling one-month contract, so I knew leaving that property wasn't going to be an issue. Once I had received written confirmation that my work contract could be closed by June 30th 2008 I handed notice in on my tenancy and prepared to vacate the property. My wife investigated the many methods for shipping goods to the US and we picked one company that could move those items we deemed essential to take, but not essential enough to carry on the plane with us, which in the end proved to be 62 boxes of clothes, photos, paintings, books, and other accumulated crap. The rest of the house, namely the beds, cupboards, cutlery, crockery, sofas, TV's, video's, computers, cars, garden furniture, kids toys, goldfish, and EVERYTHING IN THE WHOLE DAMNED HOUSE either had to be sold, given away or trashed.
We put an advert out in a few places for a garage-sale, and hoped that we would recoup some money against the costs of shipping, and flying the family out to America. In the end I have to say we did exceedingly well, and sold a heck of a lot more stuff than I imagined we would, reaping enough money to cover the shipping costs for the 62 boxes of crap we apparently needed to take with us! The rest was either given to friends or family, to charity, or to the final people to turn up just before we got on the plane, who were the trash removal people, who took away a whole van load of stuff that we hadn't managed to get rid of.

And even though we felt we had left the property in the same manner in which we had found it, the bastards at the letting company still found enough excuses to keep our months security deposit, and even had the cheek to say we owed them more money on top of that!

Anyway, we then got in a pre-arranged very large taxi which took the 5 of us and 10 suitcases to spend one night in a hotel near Heathrow Airport, before getting on a plane to Los Angeles, California.

In LA we had arranged to be met by a similarly large vehicle to take us all to our hotel in San Diego. Unfortunately the idiots at the taxi company hadn't believed me when I had said we would be bringing 10 suitcases, so it was a ridiculous journey on the freeway with luggage between seats, ontop of children, and even inbetween the two front seats, but atleast we made it there alive.

So we check in to our hotel, with our 10 suitcases, and get a good nights sleep, having been awake for the best part of 24 hours since there had been a couple of hours delay back at Heathrow which I had forgotten to mention.

I should add that I had booked this hotel for 7 nights, assuming that I could probably get myself a rented house in that time, but I was wrong, and at $369 a night I didn't want to spend too long in the hotel if I could help it!

The first thing I did was meet up with a couple of realtors to get a look around the area I was expecting to be living in. As it turned out the rental prices for the posh part of town were way above what I wanted to pay, so we looked a bit further out of town, and eventually WAY out of town, until I started seeing properties in my price range that matched what I was looking for in terms of quality and size of house.

Finally, after a week or so of looking at properties I put an offer in on one, we then haggled a little bit to-and-fro, and eventually agreed on monthly figure. However, since I had no Social Security Number (SSN), no credit rating and no previous rental history in the US, there was a big problem being allowed to rent. Luckily, and this is my personal bit of luck, the outgoing resident was the owner, who was very keen to move out, and he allowed us to sign the papers without the usual credit checks, which must be a big problem for most immigrants.

So we finally moved in after 3 weeks in the extortionately priced (but very lovely) hotel, and moved in to our beautiful rented house.

The next day the local gas/electricity company came round to turn off the power supply because I hadn't gotten around to organising the change-over - oops! The man kindly gave me 24 hours grace, and I rushed round to the San Diego Gas and Electricity company to get myself connected. Again, a lack of Social Security Number proved a problem, but they accepted a deposit and two forms of photo-ID (UK drivers license and UK Passport) and I was through another hoop.

Then I wanted to organise cell phones for my wife, myself and my eldest daughter. I went to AT&T and chose phones and all was going well until they wanted my bloody Social Security Number! The manager made a call to their connections department that said they could go ahead as long as I gave a $500 for EACH of the phone lines. Fine, whatever, I'm seeing the way this has to work now - no SSN = BIG DEPOSIT.

The same with Broadband, the same with Cable, the same for everything, except for a few things where even a deposit wasn't enough - either a SSN or nothing (hence we have cable and not DISH, since they won't talk to you without a SSN). Opening a bank account is also a big problem, and transferring money from your local currency in to Dollars may either prove very difficult or very costly. Banks wont allow you to use your US address unless you have an SSN, so they are required to send all statements and credit cards directly to your foreign address to begin with (strangely they can send check books to your local address, but they are a lot less useful than an ATM card). Again, once you get your SSN number they can get you to fill out a form and then they can use your US address.

The next thing my wife and did (and I recommend you do this quickly too) is book the written test with the Department of Motor Vehicles. I shan't bore you with the minutiae of how to book the test, and what it involves, but for California atleast I found the wonderful website excellent:

http://www.hep.man.ac.uk/u/christina/driving.html

Having passed the written test we were immediately issued temporary Californian drivers licenses, which came in very handy on many occasions for proof of address, and also meant I could buy a car if I wanted to (I don't think you cant buy one without it). As it happens I wanted to lease a car to begin with, but without a SSN it wasn't possible, and even with one it's probably difficult as foreigners will have no credit history - so I am sticking with the hire car for the time being and will lease one when I come back in October once I get my flipping SSN! When I do lease a car I am sure I will not get the best loan terms as without a credit history they score you at zero, so forget all the adverts you see on TV here for 0% finance.

I have now taken and passed my driving test! (August 13th 2008) Because my current sojourn in the US is based on a holiday visa which expires in under 60 days, I couldn't be issued with a proper driving license as it would already be about to expire. Apparently the duration of your driving license matches the term of your visa. So when I return in October I have to go back to the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) and fill out another form and then they will issue me with a year long license. After that I will have to renew it each year - it's free, but it's another aggravation. Of course once you obtain permanent residency then you will get a longer term license.

OK, that's enough for the minute. I've given you a good idea of some of the problems that will arise in respect of getting a house organized over here. I still need to add a lot about the issues arising with obtaining the Social Security Number and more importantly (well equally importantly) the full intern license, but I'll save that for the next entry.

The only other thing I wanted to add was that we also had to organise getting our three children enrolled in schools. Now our circumstances are (again) a bit different because we decided to put our kids in to private education. We visited two excellent schools, one near where we had first expected to reside and one nearer to where we had ended up living, had interviews at both, filled our the forms at both (for a big fee), were accepted by both, and then decided for a variety of reasons to go with the school nearer to where we lived. The process was quite onerous in terms of paperwork and expense, but both schools were extremely helpful and guided us through the process as best they could. I can't speak for how easy it might be to enrol children at a public school - but I imagine there is an equally painful amount of paperwork, and I bet you'll need to show them a Social Security Number!!

Farmacyst

Timelines and predictions...

2006-12-17T14:52:00.000-08:00

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 required you to have obtained a valid deficiency letter for the state that you will be working in. The purpose of the deficiency letter is to show your employer that the state board of pharmacy have accepted all your documentation for becoming a graduate intern, but have not yet received the all important Social Security Number (SSN) which cannot be applied for until after 1st October.

In the pile of information that comes from your employer with the visa paperwork are forms that enable you to apply for an internship prior to receiving the SSN, however not all boards will accept this letter (from the US Government), and California's pharmacy board is one of those that wont. They demand to see the actual SSN or they wont issue an intern license. So for me atleast, I have to wait until the 1st of October before I can apply to immigration for my SSN, which I am told should take about 2 weeks to receive. Once I have that, THEN I can apply to the Californian Pharmacy Board for my full intern license. I am told that the normal turnaround time to receive that is 3-6 weeks! So I can expect a minimum delay of 5 weeks, and a maximum of around 8 weeks, from the 1st of October, to actually receiving my intern license - and without my intern license there is no way my future employer is going to let me start working. So, that means if I am lucky I might start work around the first week of November, and if I am unlucky I might not start working until the first week of December. That means, at least in theory, that I might not receive any wages until the last day of December, and even that might not be a full months check.

So you should arrive in the United States on October 1st expecting to not receive any income until the last day of December - 3 full months!

One final note before I sign off until the fall when I actually report on how the process has gone for me, is that different states have different lengths of internship. Many are like California (as far as I am aware at least) 2080 (***see note below***) hours long, which means doing a 40-hour week and taking no holiday is exactly 52 weeks long, before you are able to sit the NAPLEX and State Law Exams. Then you have to wait until they post their results to you, wait until you can apply to the state board for a full licensure, and wait until that has been approved. So it may easily take well over 13 months from starting work before you get fully qualified and start earning a proper income. So if you badly budget your internship, and think you might delve in to your savings to see you through until you qualify, keep in mind that from October 1st of one year, it may easily take you until the February 16 months later before you finally make it.

At this point in time, I would predict that I become a fully registered R.Ph. in January 2010, and it'll be interesting to see how right or wrong my prediction will prove to be.

Next update wont be until October, so enjoy the rest of the summer!

Farmacyst
(****WRONG!!!! As has been pointed out to me by numerous kind readers, the California pharmacy board require proof of 1500 hours before being allowed to sit the Naplex. So that's 1500/40 = 37.5 weeks, plus any days off or holidays, so realistically around, say, 39 or 40 weeks. Then its around 3 weeks to get the first exam (as far as I am aware at this point) and perhaps another 3 weeks for the second exam, and then another 3 weeks to get the results - so if you pass everything first time round (and currently I am hearing a lot of people are FAILING the law exam) then thats 48 weeks from start date. Since I started mid November I now amend my prediction to (if I pass both exams first time) mid October 2009*****)

Getting closer by the day now.....to STARTING work!

2006-12-16T00:12:00.000-08:00

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 really really must take them with you. When my wife and I arrived at the US consulate in London there was a queue (sorry a "line") outside, of people having their paperwork checked before they were allowed in. Eventually it came to our turn and apparently, having been so careful and diligent in filling out and printing off the forms, I had somehow not done it correctly. Apparently the form you need for the family has to be printed off for each individual, but I swear it didn't make that clear. I can't give you a link to the actual forms because they are kept between a locked door on the consulates website, but if you want to look at the scary page before you enter, then I've added that HERE!!
So, we get told by the girl manning the desk BEFORE you get in to the embassy that we need to fill out another batch of forms before we will be allowed in, and that there is a pharmacy around the corner that has internet access available. So we walk to the pharmacy which has 3 computers, all with shmucks like us that have filled out their forms incorrectly. The fee was reasonable, but enough to make the pharmacy owner a millionaire judging by the number of shmucks that then followed in after us. It took about 40 minutes to fill out the forms and print them all off, but which time instead of being early to our appointment we were on time. However, that was totally irrelevant once you get inside the embassy as time becomes a fixed constant in the universe. Oh, and at the embassy you are NOT allowed anything electronic. People were throwing iPods and cell phones and all sorts in the trash cans 9must be a few rich hobo's around that part of London), but we happened to have parked in a car park which keeps your keys or we might have been in the same predicament. And I was told later that the pharmacy will look after your electrical goods for 10 pounds an hour. But basically just don't take ANYTHING electronic - you will have to lose it otherwise.
Then we go through passport control, customs, luggage check and immigration (only joking) and enter the consulate. We then go to another desk where another woman checks all our paperwork is correct, and she then gives us a numbered ticket. After about 20 minutes our number comes up and we go to one of the glass-protected screens (like in a bank) where a man checks all our papers again, fills out a form, stamps some papers, and gives us a new form and another ticket.
Then time stops, and we sit, unable to leave, unable to phone the outside world, unable to do anything except buy drinks and snacks at the kiosk at the back of the room and hope our number comes up sometime before we die.
After 3 and a half hours our number comes up.
We go to another woman, this time at a glass-screened kiosk around the corner, and she again checks the paperwork. She then casually asks a few questions, and then, apparently not liking one of my answers says she just wants to check something. Fifteen bloody minutes later she comes back and says, "it's OK, your visas have been authorised". Phew, because I've sold my house, given my job up, and enrolled the kids in US schools, so I'm sort of glad you've granted the visa's!
They keep our passports and we pay for the pleasure of them sending them back to us, which only takes about a week or so, depending on how much you want to pay to get them back.
One WHOLE day spent at the consulate - don't expect anything less. At least not in London, which was BLOODY BUSY.

OK, so we're good to go, yes. But there's a load more paperwork to get sorted once you arrive in the US.

Farmacyst

And finally, I start my internship!

2006-12-15T22:41:00.000-08:00

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 the 20th I sent them another email with the card as a Jpeg attachment.

By this time my employer had been in touch with me, and had sent word that there would be a 4-day induction training session held at one of their main offices, from October 27, with overnight accommodation and various gas, food and other expenses provided.

By the time of the induction I had still not yet received my intern license, but neither had most of the other H1B interns either. (The others on the course were Americans who hadn't worked for this company before, and were there to learn the companies computer system).

The 4-days was a nice opportunity to meet and chat with other H1B's from around the world, and find out how they had got to this point, with this company, at this time. Everyone had similar stories with minor variations, but the surprise to my mind was that most of the other foreigners (though not all) were quite mature (late 30's to late 40's), married, and had children. I had expected most to be single and about 25, but there you go, you learn something new every day

After my training (which I would get paid for a few weeks later), I went home and once more emailed, and once more wrote to the Board of Pharmacy. Finally, on November 12th I went online (as I had been taught to do at the training) and could find my name listed on the boards search for interns.

I immediately phoned the store I had been allocated to train at, and agreed to start the very next day!

So that's about it for this update, and in the next one I will report on how it feels to actually work in a US dispensary.

Farmacyst.

Now please go down and slightly to the right and click on

OLDER POSTS

to continue

So whats it like to work in a US pharmacy?

2006-12-14T00:03:00.000-08:00

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 computer in each UK pharmacy. In the majority of US pharmacies they divide the system in to four processes. An "in window" takes the Rx in, they process it and the Rx is filed and the rest of the system runs on the electronic Rx. The virtual Rx then goes to the "filling window" where another tech, clerk, intern or pharmacist produces a label, scans a bar code on the side of a bottle of tablets, and puts the label on the bottle. The meds are then passed to the "Quality Assurance" window, which is always run by a pharmacist, who signs it off and bags it, and finally, when the patient collects it, the drugs are given out at the "out window". This process has a certain logic to it, and doesn't take long to get used to, but it is very very different to how things are generally carried out in the UK!
Also, the US uses almost 100% of its drugs from bulk packs, where in the UK almost 100% is now supplied from 28-day calendar packs.
And of course the National Health Service in the UK has no equal in America, where either cash is king or insurance companies are involved. This adds a whole layer of difficulty to the procedure whereby at the in-window the patient hangs around whilst the clerk enters their details and applies electronically to their insurer for authorization of payment. Once that is confirmed then the patient can go, knowing they are OK to collect their medication with either an agreed co-pay (small cost towards the drugs) or no-payment if their insurance is that comprehensive, or a large sum of money if they have crappy or no insurance. Clearly very different from how things are done in the UK.

Amongst the other things I have now learnt, and worth mentioning are:

1. Payment is weekly! And by cheque (sorry, by check!). You can set up a direct bank payment (they call that auto-debit), but initially you work one week in arrears and get a check the next Friday - very nice.
2. In California at least, you do have to do a certain amount of hours in a hospital setting. I shall have to work out exactly how to organize that later, but I should be able to volunteer myself in a local hospital pharmacy for a few weekends, and get the required hours done.
3. If you have money, bring it. If you have family, leave them at home! Life is super-expensive here, and it is easy to blow a fortune in no time. Be warned!
4. There is no formal, organized assistance to pass the two remaining exams, viz the NABPLEX and the State Law Exam. You will have to work on that yourself (other companies may help their interns, nut my one doesn't!). So talk to the pharmacists and find out what you need to start studying, and get down to it.
5. For me, the company health insurance kicks in after 6 months. Given the price of drugs, if you are on any kind of medication - BRING 6 MONTHS OF IT WITH YOU!
6. About 50% of the drugs have different names here, and another 25% I've never heard of or come across before. So for all good being a pharmacist in the UK for the last 16 years has given me, I am only familiar with about 25% of the dispensary now! I have a lot of work to do! I have got three books to learn from, and aim to do just a little bit of studying every couple of days, as I have 9 months to learn it all in - and I can't afford to get it wrong. So for once in my life I actually have to put some effort in to this. I will give more details about my studying later.

OK, that's about it for now. There's probably a load of stuff I've forgotten so I may add another entry to put it all in, or may just sneakily edit this entry later, but for now, I am just thankful that I have made it this far, and am loving the feeling of working in an American dispensary, as I have aimed for this for such a long time.

Good luck to all of you, it can be done!

Farmacyst

Pharmacy Boards and Income Tax

2006-12-13T16:33:00.000-08:00

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/index.htm

Minnesota http://www.phcybrd.state.mn.us/mn_home.htm

Missouri http://www.pr.mo.gov/pharmacists.asp

Montana http://mt.gov/dli/bsd/license/bsd_boards/pha_board/board_page.asp

New Hampshire http://www.nh.gov/pharmacy/

New Jersey http://www.state.nj.us/lps/ca/medical/pharmacy.htm

Nevada http://bop.nv.gov/

Ohio http://pharmacy.ohio.gov/

Oregon http://www.oregon.gov/Pharmacy/index.shtml

Pennsylvania http://www.dos.state.pa.us/bpoa/cwp/view.asp?

Rhode Island http://www.health.ri.gov/hsr/professions/pharmacy.php

Utah http://www.dopl.utah.gov/

Vermont http://vtprofessionals.org/opr1/pharmacists/

Virginia http://www.dhp.state.va.us/pharmacy/default.htm

Washington https://fortress.wa.gov/doh/hpqa1/hps4/Pharmacy/default.htm

Wisconsin http://drl.wi.gov/boards/phm/index.htm

Wyoming http://pharmacyboard.state.wy.us/

And the second point I want to talk about is my current understanding of US taxation! After January the TV adverts become filled with two companies that offer to help you with your taxes - one is from www.hrblock.com and the other is from www.turbotax.com - now both of these have good points and bad points, some of which may be more pertinent to your individual needs, but they seem to be the two BIG companies, although of course you can use anyone, and there are plenty of small local accountants that will help you for a fairly small fee too. However, I want to add my personal opinion because there are a couple of issues that might be of interest to others. Firstly the company I work for has some kind of direct downloadable link to Turbotax, so that my yearly earnings can be collected directly - but I can't do this with HRBlock. Secondly, again as far as i currently understand it, the form that I need to use this year - called a 1040NREZ isn't available through Turbotax, but is available with HRBlock! Apparently this form is necessary for the first five years (barring exceptions) for foreign nationals, so I am therefore obligated to get this form, and therefore obligated to use (if I want to) HRBlock to help do my tax return. I am still investigating this, so I may add more later if I have any new information, but this is the way I see it currently. Finally, although it may be obvious to me, I should add that the tax year runs January 1st through December 31st, and that the tax return needs to be filed before March 31st (as far as I know).

Good luck to you all, and as always please contact me if you know any differently to what I have stated above.

Farmacyst

Time to start revising...

2006-12-12T20:49:00.000-08:00

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 didn't ask them for any assistance in this matter, my employer hasn't at any point offered to try and help me with this issue, and in the end I have hopefully found my way around this problem without their help - but I am sort of surprised they haven't at least asked me if I needed some support (frankly, and they are an excellent employer to be fair to them, they haven't asked me ANYTHING!)
So for me, I pulled a few strings and managed to make contact with the pharmacy manager of a hospital pharmacy who would normally never speak to someone like me, but did it as a favor for my friend who works in the hospital in another department. She interviewed me for the position of a "hospital volunteer" and is happy enough for me to sit in a corner somewhere for a few days to get the hours I need completed. I don't expect to learn much whilst I am there, and I don't want to get in anyone's way as she is doing me a BIG favor, but the procedure these days to be allowed to even do a few days as a volunteer requires me to go through the formal application process, be security checked, attend a day-long induction, and finally be allowed to step foot in the building. This process would normally take weeks, and may still take weeks, but they are trying to rush things through for me - but my advice to any of you out there is look in to this EARLY in your year, if you do need to do it, and don't leave it to the last minute as it may not be possible to make it happen as fast as you might like.
Hopefully all will go smoothly, and I will get my hours completed in the hospital before I have completed my normal hours, so that i will be able to apply to sit the naplex as soon as possible.
One very interesting thing I learnt whilst I was chatting with the chief pharmacist was that she would never ever consider employing a pharmacist in her department that hadn't done a D.Pharm and then done a one year residency. This residency is much like a doctors residency, is a very concentrated year of learning, at a very VERY low rate of pay, but it shows absolute commitment to the desire to be a hospital pharmacist, and assures any potential employer that this person knows their stuff really well. So if you think you want to end up one day as a hospital pharmacist I suggest you find out more about this residency option.

2. Visa renewel

OK, I had an email from my employer asking me if I had taken any action to have my visa extended, as it was due to expire on September 30th 2009 and if I hadn't had it extended prior to that date they would no longer be able to employ me. Nice! So I contacted the company lawyers that deal with my visa and they said they would put in the request to extend the visa for my whole family but that it could (in theory) take up to 90 days to get processed - so the timing was just on the edge. Thankfully my company had given me the red-flag in good time, but for all of you out there that are trying to think of how to get everything right first time, add "visa renewel" to your list, atleast 90 days prior to expiry, which will be about 9 months after you first landed in America on your visa.

3. Applying to sit the Naplex - things that need to be done ahead of time.

I downloaded the application forms to sit the naplex here:

http://www.pharmacy.ca.gov/forms/rph_app_pkt2.pdf

I had been advised to get the papers ready early as there was one important requirement that needed to be done (or could be done) well in advance of actually applying. I was also told to check that the name on my US Drivers License matched EXACTLY the name on my UK PASSPORT as well as on my US SOCIAL SECURITY CARD - if it didn't, if for example I hadn't used my middle name on any of the cards, or has used the middle initial but not the entire name, then I simply wouldn't be allowed to sit the exam. Thankfully (without having known this) they were all exactly the same - but remember this when you apply for your US SNN and US DRIVERS LICENSE - make sure they match the name in your foreign passport or you are going to get in to some real problems later trying to sit the naplex.
So the thing that needs organizing early is yet another finger-print analysis. Of course everyone will have completed this process once, prior to being granted an intern license, and this time it will be a lot easier since everyone will already be living in California, and you can just walk in to your local UPS Store to get them done (you should also get your 2"x2" US Passport size photo taken there, although it would be cheaper at Costco if you are penny-pinching). So download the form from the website above, print it out, fill out the "request for live scan service" form and go to your local UPS and get that done nice and early too, so you don't have to worry about that later either.

4. Naplex/CPJE books/resources/online info etc etc etc

I really really really want to fill this section with a thorough review of all the books and resources that anyone could ever want to use to sit the Naplex/CPJE, however, I can't do this alone as I have only used 4 books, and that's not really a very comprehensive list. So what I would ask is that any one who reads this post and has atleast one book that they've got in front of them and are using it for either the Naplex or CPJE (or other state board law exam for that matter) to please send me an email to my SCURTISCO at AOL dot COM email address and add a few words as to whether they think it is any good or not. I will start with my list of four books and hopefully this will grow to a comprehensive list I can put up on a dedicated posting at a later date:

A) APhA - an awesome review book, covers everything, very big, easy read, lots of questions and answers. As far as I am concerned this is THE book.

B) Pharmacy and Federal Drug Law Review - David Kosegarten & Dougas Pisano - I haven't read this properly yet, but it looks good, and is FULL of questions and answer and covers the law section too.

C) A Guide To California Community Pharmacy Law - Fred Weissman - I should have kept details of how to buy this as it isn't that easy to get hold of, and although pretty heavy going it is considered THE BOOK to pass the law questions on the CPJE - also it is worth reading prior to becoming a pharmacist so you feel competent on how to practice in the real world when some of those difficult decisions in life actually come up - like partialing a C2 or using split NDC's or borrowing from another pharmacy or changing the quantity or recording an error and so on. No excuse really, we all need to read this book whether before the CPJE or after.

***UPDATED ENTRY***
You can buy Weissman book as follows:

Phone the USC Bookstore on: 323-442-2674 (Says freephone customer service # 800-571-5086)
Book is called: "A guide to California pharmacy Law" by Fred Weissman
ISBN #: 978-1-4243-3390-5
Cost to me was $46 + tax + shipping = $57.26

D) Finally, I purchased a little pocket book called "Tarascon Pocket Pharmacopoeia" available here:

- its more or less the equivalent to the BNF we used in the UK, and it is my intention to try my best to have read through it once before I sit the exam so i have at least once heard/read of every drug that exists in the US.
E) Oh, and you should read at least 2 years worth of "Pharmacist Letters" - I'll try and remember to add a link to that shortly too.

Thanks to all of my loyal readers. I guess the next entry will be the big one, about the actual Naplex itself!

Farmacyst

Nearly there...

2006-12-11T22:22:00.000-08:00

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 just needed to do a few days in the hospital. I still had to go through all the protocols the hospital had in place, but I got the impression that for most people who wanted to volunteer, the minimum return on their workload was a lot more than the few days I was going to be there for. So although there is no minimum set hours for working in a hospital, you might find the hospital will want you to do a reasonable amount.
The lady in HR took me through a work-book that described all the hospitals departments, functions, alarm codes, expectations on its volunteers and so on and so forth. It took perhaps an hour and she said she would send another load of paperwork for me to fill out later for when I came back just before I started work.
I then filled out some forms about my medical history and having been offered the opportunity to bring in papers to show I had various innoculations or have blood taken, I opted to have the blood tests anyway. So I then went to the nurse who takes blood and after that I then went back upstairs and went to another nurse who jabbed me in the arm for a TB test. I was then told I had to come back later in the week to have that skin test looked at, come back early next week for a second skin-prick, and then come back again at the end of the next week to have the second skin prick looked at. Since this particular hospital was no where near where I lived, nor in the direction of where I worked, we worked out there was another hospital that was vaguely in the direction of where I worked where a nurse there could look at the result of this skin-test, and then administer and look at the results of next weeks test, and send all the paperwork back to hospital number one, which is what then happened.
Finally, after all the blood tests and skin test results came back, HR told me I was ready to return the new pile of papers that they had sent through the post, and could then start my hospital hours. So I read through the pile of papers - each section had a test at the end to make sure you had read it - and finally presented myself back at HR ready to roll. We went through my responses, signed some more forms, went over to another department to have my photo taken and ID badge made, and then finally walked in to the pharmacy.
I have to congratulate everyone in the hospital pharmacy where I worked. They all found the time to answer my questions and allowed me to shadow them and look over their shoulders whatever they were doing. I dressed up in disposables and worked in the laminar flow room to count cytotoxis, I went up to the wards and saw how the Dr's and nurses sent rx's down to the pharmacy and how they dispensed some items directly from the wards, I watched the techs process the rx's in the pharmacy and how the pharmacists checked them and communicated queries with the wards, I watched DVD's on preparing aseptic pharmaceuticals and chatted with the pharmacy clinicians about what formula's they used and prepared stock sheets and loads of other things that were all invaluable lessons which I would never have learnt had I not been surrounded by such helpful people.
So, apart from the fact that the experience was a positive one, and possibly even helpful towards passing my forthcoming exams, the point I wanted to make to you is that you shouldn't leave this to the last minute. It can easily take MONTHS to go through the requirements to be allowed in to the pharmacy even if you have someone happy to take you on. So start the process as soon as you can, as you wouldn't want this holding up your ability to apply to sit the exams once you've completed your intern hours.

So on a similar note I need to correct one comment I made in a previous blog regarding the requirement to do hospital hours. When you apply to sit the exams there are 3 parts to think about. The Naplex application is done online via the NABP wesbite, with a cost of $465. The CPJE exam is $185 and done as part of the overall application to the California Board of Pharmacy (CBP) and the third part is to once again have your fingerprint analysis done and sent to the California Board of Pharmacy.

I went to the local UPS with the triplicate form I had downloaded from the CBP and paid them $71 for the analysis, including FBI and DOJ (Department of Justice) background checks. (You will need a 2x2 passport photo which is cheap to do at Costco or Walgreens, but can be done at CVS or some UPS stores, amongst other places). Because I have a slightly odd finger one or two of my prints didn't go through so well, so the girl I spoke with said if it didn't work I could come back and have it done again for free. I asked her how long it would take to come back if it didn't work and she gave me a vague answer of between three days and three months. I took this to mean she didn't really know, but my point to you readers is that this can be done at any time (as far as I know) before applying to the board ot the NABP, so you might as well do this early as well so that if any problems do arise you can hear about it in good time.

The next thing I did was fill out all the paperwork for the CBP. This has 7 elements to it, not all of which are necessary depending on whether you are a foreign grad, a pharmacist registered in another state wishing to transfer, or a home grown graduate. But from our point of view, the issue I want to raise, and make a correction from my past comment, is that for one part, regarding pharmacy intern hours, there is another form that needs to be printed off from the CBP website and SIGNED BY EACH PRECEPTOR IN ALL PLACEMENTS WHERE THE INTERN HAS WORKED. So this meant that I had to get the pharmacy manager in the hospital that I did my hours their to sign this form for me as well as my own preceptor in my pharmacy, and send them both off together with the fee and all the other paperwork as required.

So don't think you can get away with doing no hospital hours - you will, and you will have to get the pharmacist their to sign the affidavit stating how many hours you completed there too.

And then finally, I also went online to the NABP website and paid my application fees to them too.

And that's it now. I just sit back and wait to be deemed eligible, and then I should get some paperwork from the PSI (Psychological Services, Inc) to sit the CPJE and get an "Authorization to test" or ATT back from the NABP to sit the Naplex. And that's about it, bar one more fee to the PSI to pay, I hope I will get my package from the PSI any day now, and my ATT from the NABP too, and then I can schedule my tests and let you all know how it goes, or let you know what went wrong, or what I forgot to do, or anything else that crops up to delay the process.

The only thing I have got checked out is that my name on my UK Passport matches my name on my Social Security Card and that they both match the name on my pharmacy intern license, my California drivers license and my birth certificate, as I have heard from a couple of people how any combination of these things that aren't identical can prove to be big problems trying to sit the tests.

Also I heard from one person how she got into enormous problems trying to get her result as she moved house between sitting the exams and waiting for the results. So although I do actually want to move soon, I am not about to start messing about with addresses until I have all of this behind me. And if that isn't a good enough reason, then I also don't want to move whilst my application to extend my visa is in progress either, as the immigration need to be told of any address change, and doing that mid-application is probably too complex a procedure for them to handle! So I'm staying where I am until I'm through all of this.

And that's all I want to say on this entry for now. For those of you about to head to America to begin your internships at the end of September, may I remind to read my section on Moving to America - there's a lot of very useful stuff there I had to learn the hard way. BUy a car whilst you have funds, take your driving test quickly, make sure you use your full name on that and your application for your SSN and they should both match your intern application name or in a years time you will have a real headache applying to sit for the final two exams.

Be well, be healthy, and be assured it can be done!

Farmacyst.

Booking the tests...

2006-10-12T14:04:00.000-07:00

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 will have to go online to the NABP website and apply to sit the Naplex with them.

What then happens is the reverse. The Naplex wont issue an Authorization To Test (ATT) until the CABP do. The CABP wont issue an ATT until they receive the OK from the finger-print analysis company, and they wont release the OK until they have had the all clear from both the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI check ups.

Finally once everything is in place, you will get an email from the NABP saying you are eligible to apply to sit their exam. This implies you will have also been approved to sit the CPJE, but their letter may take a little longer to come through the post, but you wont need the CABP letter to go online and choose your dates anyway.

So once you have the NABP email, you follow the link to the website, register an account, tick the box that says your board has already been notified and they match up the new account with the hardcopy request and then you can choose your dates from those available in the area you wish to sit the exam. There is another small fee to be paid to the examining people here too.

Then you go to the link for the CPJE exam hereand do the same thing, but use your Social Security Number (SSN) instead of the code that the NABP sent in their email.

The letter from the Californian Board says you will receive a candidate handbook within two weeks, and that the cover of this contains your "notice of eligibility". I was informed (thankfully) that there was no need to wait for this, and to just use my SSN (which worked). Apparently they don't actually send out these handbooks, but I haven't waited two weeks yet, so its too soon to comment on that really.

So there you have it. I have received the OK from all the various organizations, traversed the various websites and registered, paid, and booked my exams now. And all I have to do is find the time to do a little studying before I sit them in about 2 weeks time.

I will be sitting the Naplex on October 13th 2009 and the CPJE on October 19th 2009, and it is just theoretically possible I might have become a fully registered pharmacist within one year of starting my internship.

I guess the next entry here will be an interesting one about my experience of the Naplex itself.

Oh, one other thing on a completely different subject: My visa renewal has come back just a few days before my employer were ready to kick me out. And I now have to rush off to the DMV next week to get my Drivers License extended as that runs out on Wednesday - it's all extremely time-critical if you don't get all the paperwork sorted the first day it needs doing. And of course if anything goes even slightly wrong then you might be up the creek without a paddle. For example although my Drivers License went through OK, for some reason the DMV didn't accept my wife's in the same way, and they sent her a very short duration license then a temporary one, and then a second temporary one. After that they finally verified the original papers but said it was too short a time period to send out a new license and they never issue 3 temporary licenses to anyone, so she just went off the radar. She had to resort to using her UK license here again, until her visa extension came through, which was about two weeks after mine.

Anyway, for us, thankfully, all has just about worked out. But I can see problems to the left and to the right if things don't work out just right, first time and without any issues.

And now, its about time I did some revision I think :-)

Farmacyst

The Naplex®: My opinion....

2006-09-09T23:44:00.000-07:00

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 block a couple of other exam takers (not for pharmacy) were walking in the same direction, so I just followed them. Otherwise I would probably have never found the place, so take the phone number of the exam facility with you just in case!
In the room there were different requirements depending on which exam you were taking. For Naplex takers you get a piece of paper to read with the rules on and then have your FINGER PRINT taken and then a photo. Other exam takers had to give PALM PRINTS, which apparently reads the veins in your palm, which is pretty clever, but we don't have to do that currently.
You will be given a locker to put all your personal belongings in, so you are OK to take a wallet, cell phone and so on into the building, somewhat unlike the FPGEE.
One by one (as each person may have slightly different rules to listen to) you are taken in to the exam area. A different person explains more rules, asks you to double check all your pockets, explains the option for a 10 minute break after 2 hours, and again takes your finger print. Then you get a small wipe-out board and a felt-tip pen to write on it - careful here because you must NOT rub what you write out! If you fill the board put your hand up and they will give you another one. The examiner said that I could put on the earphones if I wanted as other people in the room would be speaking at some points (maybe they were taking the dreaded TOEFL?) or I could use the ear-plugs he gave me. I tried the ear plugs and they were useless, so I put on the ear-phones and that kept me focused as I didn't notice anyone speaking the whole time.
Before the exam starts there is an optional practice program to help you get familiar with the buttons. I suggest you do this as it was useful. Oh, and the examiner, proctor, whatever his title is asked if I wanted a calculator (there is one on the computer that appears by pressing a button) but I recommend 100% that you take the calculator or ask for one, as the computer version just doesn't feel as good as one in your hand, and I think I was probably much faster with the hand held one.
Finally, at almost exactly 8am to the dot, I hit the "start exam" button.

In the exam rules I had read in the ante-room it had said you may not write on the white-board until the exam starts, so as soon as the clock was running the first thing I did was to write down the four or five formula I had chosen to try and remember. May be it was nerves, but I only remembered three, and couldn't for the life of me remember what the other two were even about. Oh well.

Now, someone I know once told me the Naplex was easy. He lied. If he had said that there was plenty of time to do all the questions, that would have been true. I never ever rushed, I spent a long time just sitting in thought trying to decide which answer was best, I never once looked at the clock, and I finished with 13 minutes to spare. I was quite surprised when a box sprang up after 2 hours asking me if I wanted to take the optional 10 minute break - which I did, and I will mention more of that in a minute. But time-wise, there was plenty of time as far as I was concerned.
If that person had said that a lot of the maths questions were very simple and straightfowards, that would have been correct too - many were very very simple. But when he said that the exam itself was easy he was definitely lying - it was NOT EASY!

Before the exam I had tried to sit the online pre-Naplex which costs $50 and is available on the NABP website. It just so happens that the one time I tried to take it (admittedly a little late, as I was only trying to do it the night before the exam!) there was some glitch with the server so I couldn't take it. That means I can't comment on how close it was to reality, or how well that score would have matched my score from the real exam, but anyway, I would probably advise you to spend the $50 as all other sites that I have looked at asked many useful questions, but none quite matched what I experienced in the actual exam.
There was one site I used - called exam master - which was a bit expensive at $99 for a months usage - but it had thousands of good questions, and I will keep using that site for practice until my membership expires. One of the options on that site is to select up to 150 questions and sit it in an exam style experience - the other option is to call it a tutorial, where you get the same multi-choice question but then you can hit the "explain" button, and it will give the logic for the right and wrong answers. I had only chosen to pay this $99 membership because my pre-Naplex didn't work, but I had one days usage before I sat, and I gave myself a 150 questions exam to practice on. My score was about 60% on that site, and the way its broken down you can see you get, for example, 90 correct answers and 60 wrong. This gave me the idea that in the actual exam I would have two columns, one for "certain I got right" and another for "not sure" and I would aim to have more in the first column than in the second! I actually did this, although it wasn't perfectly exact as you can't be certain you've got anything right really, but in the end I had three columns, as I amended "not sure" to "good/best guess" and another column for "absolutely no flipping idea". At the end of the exam my three columns were:
Confidant:Good guess:no idea - 76:81:16 = 173 total. The exam has 185 questions, so I guess I must have forgotten to mark my answers sometimes. Now I'm going to make an assumption that 90% of the time I was confidant I was right, and 40% of the time I was making a good guess (ie it was probably down to one of two likely answers) I was right, and I'll assume my complete guess was right 20% of the time, and the missing 12 answers I'll let them be all wrong although they probably were all completely correct of course :-)
So adding that all up, I'm going to guesstimate (and I feel that this is the lowest I could have got), that I got:
76x(95/100)+ 81x(40/100) + 16x(20/100) = 72+32+3=107/185=58% - nope, I'm going to add 3 bonus percent from those missing answer, so I've decided that the lowest mark I could have got is 61% in the Naplex. If it just so happens that the scaled score reflects a pass mark of 60% then my scaled score should be about 76 or 77 - ie I've just just just scraped a pass. Of course if I find I didn't pass, then I'll be able to estimate whether I think the actual pass % is 70% or 75% etc, or if I passed with a big margin, then I'll be able to calculate the actual pass % is 55% or even 50% etc - we shall see.
Bottom line, for me, is I do not feel confidant, but I do think I might have just scraped a pass.

Ok, so here's the bit everyone wants to know of course! What came up in the test? Well, firstly, it was nothing at all like what I was expecting. I don't know why, and I'm not even sure what I was expecting, but all the questions seemed to me to fall in to one of three categories:

1. Mathematical questions:
As I said earlier, a lot of these were really simple. How simple. Let me make a question up: You want to make a mixture that has 5% of drug Z in. You have some capsules which each contain 1gm of drug z. How many capsules would you need to make 100gm of the mixture.
If you can't do those sort of questions, then you're in trouble! I'm not sure, but I'd swear I had 15 questions like that!
2. Pure clinical with a twist of nasty:
I feel like every question that was on the test was asked in a tricky way. Hardly any clinical question was straightforward, and a couple of them I wasn't exactly sure what they meant in the question. (After the exam there is a short survey and a feedback opportunity, so if you get any questions you couldn't make sense of make a note and you can write a comment about them there. I remembered one question which I commented on in that feedback box, but there was at least another one I should have added there too). You want an example of course, so here's a question I shall make up as an example. Let's say you know what drug x is. Of course you do, you're very clever! Well, they don't ask you what drug x is, or what it is for or how it works, they give a list of 5 other drugs, 2 of which you've never heard of, and ask which of these 5 is NOT for the same use as drug x. Nasty nasty nasty.
Another thing they did, and they kept doing this, is they gave a lovely long clinical profile chart, with a patient taking 8 meds you know and are familiar with. Then they say, which one would you stop. Hmmm. Nasty. Then they say if you stopped x (which may or may not be your previous answer), which of the following 5 drugs (2 of which you've never heard of) would you replace it with? Nasty nasty nasty.
3. Odd facts you either know or don't have a flipping clue about:
OK, there were loads of nice simple questions along the lines of what is the OTC medication "brand z" for, which of the following is for disease y, and if a patient has the following symptoms which of these 5 medicines would you recommend. Those were all very nice, and generally went in my "confidant" column. However, I must have been asked 4 or 5 times which reference book would you use to look up such and such a problem in, and at least 3 of the five options I had never heard of. Nasty. And quite a few times they asked about drugs I just hadn't heard of, and although you can sometimes rule them out because you know it is one of the others, sometimes you aren't sure, and so I ticked the unknown drug just because (that would be in the "no flipping clue" column).
And finally, here's a horrible horrible amazing and horrible thing for a multiple choice exam - twice I was asked to calculate a problem and then give my answer in the box. No multiple choice options at all. Just work it out and write my answer in the box. I can only hope that is how they test the test questions, because it sure aint multiple choice.

So, what would I do different in terms of study, knowing what I know now? Well, I think I'll try and re-read APhA (still the best source, but get the latest edition don't accept an old out-of-date version) and focus a lot more on what NOT to give, and what ELSE if you can't give the first choice. For maths i'd just double check a couple of formula's that I may have needed (they are almost all in the front pages of the Manan Shroff's "reference guide for pharmaceutical calculations" book. none of them are at all difficult. I shall search high and low for a list of reference books and find out what they are useful for, and I shall perhaps try and get more familiar with any new drugs that came out over the last two years, as I am sure all the drugs I had never heard of must have been new releases.

Just to finish off one matter I mentioned earlier - the 10 minute break. Strangely, but don't hold me to this as it may be different where you take it, you can leave the building during those 10 minutes. I could have gone to my car, flicked through and found those two bloody formula I had forgotten, and gone back in all very happy. As it happens I just used the restroom and went back in, but it does make you think. I should also add that if I had looked at any paperwork for more info it wouldn't have made any difference for me, as I never got any of those sorts of questions in the second half of my test. But I'm just mentioning it in case you are a serious chain smoker or you spotted a Starbucks next door, or want to eat something at the 2-hour break. You can.

As a final word of caution, I must remind you that the exam is an adaptive test, and asks questions based (somehow) on how you answer each question. There must be a large pool of questions to draw from (someone once mentioned 60,000 but who knows) and I am sure someone else taking the same test today will have a completely different experience and totally different moans and complaints, so don't assume that just because all my math questions seemed fairly easy (they weren't, I've just mentally blocked out the difficult questions so I can sleep at night), it doesn't mean you won't be stuck with a whole pile of nasty questions about (enter subject you find most horrendous!).

Well, I have no idea when the results will come through, but I shall of course report it all here as soon as I know. But for the time being I must now focus on the CPJE and will add that update shortly after I sit the exam next Monday.

Good luck to everyone, you're going to need it!!

Farmacyst

The CPJE: My opinion

2006-08-08T19:04:00.000-07:00

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 went through at the back of the Weissman Law book. I have written elsewhere how to obtain that book, so I wont repeat it, but that book is AWESOME, EXCELLENT and TOTALLY REQUIRED READING. I had two other sources of info for the LAW side of the CPJE, I had a book called:

Pharmacy and Federal Drug Law review, by Kosegarten and Pisano ISBN:0-07-144560-9
Which did a good attempt, but was really about FEDERAL laws more than Californian specific laws (which are very often very different). It came with a CD which, when I finally got round to putting in my computer the day before the CPJE to test myself with, didn't work because my computer runs on Vista and that CD only works on Windows 7 or something. Typical.

I also had Pharmacy Law: Textbook and Review by Debra Feinberg which was too long for me to read in the time I had left, but had about 450 law questions at that back that were probably worth the time spent flicking through.

But nothing beats Weissman for the law. I LEARNT the law from that book. I read every page of it, I answered every question carefully at the back, and I was SHOCKED at how many times I got the wrong answer! That book is incredible. It asks questions in the sneakiest, cleverest, nastiest way, either to trick you outright, or to teach you how they might ask the questions in the actual CPJE. That totally kicked me up the backside when I was going through the Q and A section. There is nothing like it, and I thoroughly recommend everyone who takes the CPJE to learn this book like its the most important book in the world. It sort of is!

However I also knew that the law probably only amounted to about a third of the exam questions, and I had very little time left to study (I only gave myself 5 days of study between the Naplex and the CPJE and honestly it took 4 days to go through Weissman with a fine tooth comb). So I had sort of given up trying to learn anything else in a logical manner, and just flicked through random areas of study every so often, depending on what thoughts jumped in to my head.

So I gradually got increasingly nervous between taking the Naplex and building up to taking the CPJE, as the Naplex had been such a disgustingly difficult test, and I didn't want to come out of the CPJE exam feeling as bad as I had after the first test, although to some extent I was trying to prepare myself for that emotional drain.

I had spoken with lots of pharmacist colleagues about the CPJE who had all said the same thing about the CPJE - "It was a very tricky exam." And having looked at those questions (well, answers) in the Weissman book I got in to a bit of a downward spiral of nerves.

So it was the evening before the exam, and I finally decided enough was enough at 2am. I collected all my papers needed for the exam (Drivers License, Passport and SSN), put the address in my Sat Nav and set my alarm for 7am (this time the exam was at 9am and about 15 minutes drive away).

I woke up at 7am absolutely exhausted. Clearly 2am was far too late the night before an exam. DONT STAY UP SO LATE PEOPLE!! Anyway, I had plenty of time, so I got dressed and picked my bits and pieces together and drove to the gas station to buy a coffee and then, with my heart starting to pound, I drove off to take the dreaded exam.

This venue was far easier to find (although again I recommend you take a cell phone and their phone number just in case you have problems) and I arrived in the room at just after 8.30am. It took until after 9.30am to get through all the people in the room, one by one, as this venue was far less efficient than the naplex venue had been for some reason. The only marginal benefit to me was that it had given me time to drink my coffee, which helped wake me up a bit, although the nervous adrenaline had helped of course!

So finally it was my turn to enter the exam area and get the repeat lecture from the proctor, go through the practice on the computer, and then hit that "start test" button.

In this exam I wasn't offered a calculator, and it wasn't really needed. There were perhaps 3-4 questions, if that, that required some maths, but the computer calculator was sufficient for those few, simple questions (unlike the Naplex which had dozens of maths questions, and some of which were a bit complex). Also, in this exam I received two pencils and a piece of paper to write on, instead of the plastic board and erasable pen which I had for the Naplex - pencil and paper being a much better option.

So here's the test, three, two, one...

Actually, I had again for this test decided to write down a list of how many I thought I got right for sure, how many I though I had probably got right, and hhow many I had no idea about and had literally guessed. More of that in a minute.

Two, one, zero...

The questions on the Naplex had been varied, complex, difficult and scary. These questions, as I went through them, were all worded in a straightforward manner, with almost no attempt to trick you in to giving the wrong answer, and were a delight to work through. That's not to say I did well or not, but this exam in terms of style, was lovely! That Weissman bloke, and most of my fellow pharmacists, had scared me in to thinking that every question was going to be a minefield of trickery and underhanded backstabbing evil. It wasn't. It was great :-)

Of the 90 questions, I recorded on my little sheet as follows;

Probably Right - Possibly Right - Guessed = 42 - 22- 26

If I were to try and estimate what that might work out as a percentage, I'd hazard a guess I got about 65% may be? Is that a pass mark? I have no idea, but I felt like I had done OK.

The vast majority of the law questions I knew without thinking about, a few were off subject from what I had learnt, but only required simple logic to answer (I hope). there were quite a few, lets call them in-practice type questions, which again I think could be answered by logic. And almost all the rest of the exam were questions about specific drugs - what were they for, what was their side-effect, how should the patient use them, dosage strength, frequency, interactions, contra-indications and other stuff along the lines of what the example questions had been like. Now, they certainly weren't all easy. There were far too many drugs I had never heard of, or had heard of but had never noticed whether they should be taken at bed, or with food, or might cause drowsiness or not. But most questions, if I didn't know the answer, could be reduced to one of two possibles, and I just have to hope I hit the right option more often than not.

And that's it really. Well, actually one more thing I found worthy of sharing - don't bother asking for a re-score! Read here for why its not worth it.

And that really is it. I was shattered after that test, but it was a far more positive experience. I have no idea if I passed or not, but it was not the horrid sick depressive awful exam that the Naplex was for me. I finished with 3 minutes to spare only on this test, and there were a load of questions I knew the answer to without thinking about which saved me a lot of time, so you do want to sort of keep atleast half an eye on the watch towards the end of the exam. On that note I forgot to mention again you can bring cellphones, and wallets and so forth in to the building, as they will give you a place to store them whilst you sit the test - just make sure you turn your phone OFF completely, and not just to vibrate as it will still beep if someone leaves a voicemail, and they may take action for that.

I should have the result of this test within 30 days, unless they are running an audit, and I shall finish this blog off with the results of my Naplex and CPJE before I move on.

Good luck to you all, and I hope you have found this useful,

Farmacyst

Books You HAVE to have read:

ABSOLUTELY MUST MUST MUST MUST READ:

And you ABSOLUTELY MUST READ WEISSMAN LAW GUIDE (see previous blog for details on how to purchase)

Books worth thinking about getting:

The Naplex: RESULT!!!!!!!

2006-07-07T20:35:00.000-07:00

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 appeared weren't general information questions, they were all super-specific single issue items of knowledge, such as knowing a particular side-effect of a particular drug, knowing which specific drug should or should not be given to a patient with a specific co-morbidity, or which particular drug was the second line drug of choice if the patient couldn't tolerate the first line therapy - none of this sort of specific factual information was studied with emphasis in any way during my revision stage. That isn't to say I didn't flick my eye across the information, I probably did - it is all in APhA for sure - I just had no idea before the exam that that was the sort of knowledge I should have been focusing on, rather than the broader concepts I had incorrectly assumed might be important to know, going in to the test.
On the plus side I had 18 years of pharmacy experience and knowledge behind me, which I am sure must have counted for something in the test.

Next, it is worth mentioning that for a foreign pharmacist, over and above a home-grown US-pharmacy graduate, there are far more consequences to the possibility of not passing the exams first time. That is not to say that US-graduate pharmacist interns don't feel the stress - I am sure they do - they certainly have (most of them) huge financial consequences weighing down on them as they sit these exams; but for the foreign pharmacists there are powerful threats of potentially having to give up the dream of living in America and returning home, having spent years and years moving towards the reality of becoming an American pharmacist, and for most of us a considerable amount of money invested in that plan too. For me, I am not ashamed to say, I had spent my entire life-savings getting to the point of sitting these exams, and as far as I was concerned I really couldn't see a way out if I had found I was not up to the final challenge of passing the Naplex and the CPJE. The consequences, to put it bluntly, didn't bear thinking about.

Finally, I had received a very carefully worded letter from my employer which phrased the potential consequence of failure in stark terms which said - if I didn't pass both exams within 90-days of completing my 1500 intern hours, there was the chance that they would review my continued employment with the company. Under normal circumstances that might appear as nothing more than a option that may never be actioned, but in todays economy (knowing certain things that I do), it wouldn't surprise me if they did use that options, although I have never heard of them doing so, and I do know people that have failed the CPJE and did stay with the company until they re-sat - but it added to the fear nonetheless.

Ok, having got that all off my chest, so everyone is quite clear how I felt when I got home this evening and found the letter from the Naplex in the post box, I got the courage to open the envelope and it read as follows:

Your score is reported as a scaled score. A minimum scaled score of 75 is required to pass this examination.

Your Total Scaled Score is: 88

Congratulations. You have passed the Naplex.

And now I have an even longer wait until I get the result from the CPJE. But if there was a tragedy and I had to sit the CPJE again I could handle that - it was only a 2 hour exam, the questions were all in plain English, and I would know pretty well how to revise for that exam. It was the Naplex exam that I never ever ever wanted to have to see again, it being pretty much the worst 4 and a half hours of my life that I can recall. Thankfully, I will never need to go through that experience again. And hopefully I will pass the CPJE and then I can finally relax and really believe that I have made it America for good.

I hope everyone else who follows me finds the Naplex a lot easier than I did, but if you too find it the worst exam you've ever taken, are convinced you've failed by a huge margin, and are totally crushed by the experience - DONT GIVE UP - AS YOU TOO MAY STILL HAVE PASSED.

Good luck to all who have to sit the Naplex in the future, and thank you SO much for all the good wishes everyone had been sending me, it has meant a great deal to feel such support.

Farmacyst.

The CPJE: RESULT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2006-06-06T21:43:00.000-07:00

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.

Here's the overall stats for the CPJE:

CPJE

Fail 18.4%
Pass 81.6%

So, overall, 18.4% of people sitting the, apparently easier CPJE exam, 18.4% fail. Hmmm. Well, that means that the pass mark on this easy exam must be waaaaaaaay higher than that for the evil Naplex. Interesting.

Ok, now I suggest you all take a 5 minute interlude and read the following:

http://www.pharmacy.ca.gov/forms/det_passing_scores.pdf

The first thing to note is that the scaled score for the CPJE still gives a passing mark at 75, but has a MAXIMUM ATTAINABLE as 99. Wow! I've read the whole report like 100 times and I still don't really understand what it means, apart from perhaps it is possible to sit an "easy" version of the CPJE and scrape a pass, or get a really difficult version and get a really awesome score, but either way anyone who gets above 75 is deemed worthy of being called a pharmacist. Ok, but would you feel sick if you had the tough questions and did really badly and failed? Who knows.

Now, before I get back to my personal story, I just want to break down the CPJE and Naplex stats one layer deeper, comparing Californian-trained graduates vs other-US-graduates and non-US-graduates:

California CPJE: fail/pass% 6.9 93.1 Naplex: 0.7 99.3
Other US CPJE: fail/pass% 27.2 72.8 Naplex: 3.2 96.8
Foreign CPJE: fail/pass% 39.7 60.3 Naplex: 7.7 92.3

So, to make that clear, if you studied pharmacy in California you had a 99.3% chance of passing the Naplex (compared to 92.3 for foreigners) and you had a 93.1% chance of passing the CPJE compared to just 72.8% for non-Californian graduates and an horrendously poor 60.3% for foreign pharmacists.

I guess I can accept the difference in success rates for the Naplex, but how come Californian pharmacy graduates are so fantastic at passing the CPJE? What do they teach them at college that we don't know. The answer is very important, and I promise you it is NOT the law side of the exam, which if you have read Weissman as well as I have you will know the answer to every law question that comes up.

Take another 5 minute break and read the exam outline for the CPJE:

http://www.pharmacy.ca.gov/forms/exam_outline_after0406.pdf

My alternate interpretation of this is that there are 25 Law questions, 25 community pharmacy questions and 25 hospital pharmacy questions. And if they weight them in any way differently it is heavily scored towards the hospital (or clinical) questions. So, my assumption is that the Californian Schools of Pharmacy go all out to teach their students the real hard core clinical pharmacy that I never even touched when I was an undergraduate, apart from by looking at pages in a book, and once or twice putting some chemicals into the brain stem of a recently-alive frog. I think this is the issue that needs to be looked at by us foreign grads, as I believe it is our greatest weakness, and why so many of us fail this easy-feeling but actually very hard-to-pass exam.

Finally, I would add that from the minute breakdown right at the end of the report HERE you will see that passing the CPJE is a real challenge for Indian, Philippino, N.Korean and Yugoslavian graduates (at least for the six-month period this covers). In the previous 6-month breakdown HERE the weakest link includes Russians and Egyptians.

So, we do badly. But a lot of Americans fail this test too. But all I want to try and do is isolate what the Californians do so much better than us so that we can try and focus our energies on our weakest area/s and bring our results up a little. I had thought is was perhaps lack of knowledge of US pharmacy law, hence I studied that until I was expert, but having sat the exam, and seen my result, my conclusion is that the area we should actually focus on is the clinical side.

Ok, you can give yourselves another 5-minute break for having got this far. This is probably my LAST and FINAL entry in this blog and I want to include everything, so my apologies for it being a long winded posting.

I sat the CPJE on September 19th 2009 and I was reliably informed by everyone including the Californian Board of Pharmacy that it takes at least four weeks for the result to come out. I had looked at the mail box early yesterday but the post hadn't arrived so I had forgotten about it until my wife came home late in the evening and decided to check again. I was absolutely NOT expecting a letter from the BOP this soon so I wasn't really thinking about it. When my wife walked in I could sense she was scrutinizing one letter particularly closely and then...

I had been told by one friend who had recently become registered that when you get the second letter if you have passed it comes with a green form for you to apply to become registered as a licensed pharmacist. I assume if you don't pass they give you a second page with a breakdown of areas of weakness like I am told they do for the FPGEE.

So my wife looks up at me and she say's, "Oh, I'm sorry, I really wanted you to open this but..."

You know, dear followers, I have been so incredibly fortunate. I passed the FPGEE first time, I passed the iBT-TOEFL first time, I managed to get not one but two H1B-sponsors first time, AND I managed to get one of my H1B-applications pulled in the lottery first time; I then passed the Naplex first time and now...

I started this process way back around early 2006. My wife and I had a chat about coming to America and to investigate what we had to do to realize that dream. We went through some really incredulous moments trying to just apply to sit the FPGEE and I was so frustrated by the process I decided to write a blog following the never-ending battle against red-tape and bad luck. But now, four and a half years later...

My wife says to me, "I couldn't help it, I can read through the envelope it says here..."

I have had one hell of a run of luck so far, I have timed everything to such incredible perfection. I bailed out of an amazing business in the UK just before the market crumbled, I moved to the US just before the economy made the chances of getting an H1B-sponsor as a pharmacist far harder than ever before, and now, 4-days less than a year since I started my internship...

My wife says, "it says 'congratulations you have successfully passed the required..'"

And she was not the only one screaming with delight!

Through the envelope the address label was actually on the green sheet as my friend had told me. I guess if the address is on white paper you might not want to open it so fast.

But I passed the bastard CPJE!!

I have done it, done it ALL, done it done it done it.

And so this story is at an end, but this is not the end of the story. I still have to become a green-card carrying permanent resident of the United States of America, and I am sure as I progress onwards I will have many a tale to tell of life as an R.Ph., and so I have decided to end this blog with the birth of another. Before I give the link to that blog (which I haven't really started yet, just put up an introduction) I want to once again thank each and every one of you for taking the time to read this story of my crazy journey from there to here. I am sure you will have had equally fabulous adventures as you move along the path of life, and I wish everyone as much success as I have been blessed with to have passed every hurdle so smoothly, to have had such a supportive wife and 3 kids always believing in me, and all of you, for reading my outpourings, my stresses and my successes, and for wishing me well at every step of the way, thank you, really, thank you.

And here's where the next story will start:

http://us-rph.blogspot.com/

Take care and may G-d be with you in all that you do, every step of the way.

Farmacyst

AKA Steven C:-)

Well, I should have guessed this would happen...

2005-05-05T23:53:00.000-07:00

November 24th 2009

I've mentioned this before, but it seems that at every stage of this process somehow something goes wrong,but I really thought I had got away with it this time. I was wrong.

Having passed my Naplex and CPJE and sent my check to the board, the only possible thing left to happen was to receive my R.Ph. registration number and then start working as a US pharmacist.

What actually happened was that on November 16th 2009 I received a letter from the California Board of Pharmacy saying that their had been an "operator error" with my fingerprint/Livescan done on August 13th 2009, and that my date of birth had been entered incorrectly. The board couldn't issue me a license until this had been corrected and that they were working to correct this, but suggested things might move faster if I repaid the fee ($61) and had the test re-done.

I did the test again.

I am not amused, and I am not a US pharmacist, yet.

Can you believe it!

Farmacyst.
(Apparently one colleague got exactly the same letter that I did, so I am not alone in this, and whilst I got my Livescan test done at a well known parcel delivery company he had his scan done at the local Police station, so I'm not sure who's "operator error" we are talking about here, but I think this may well be the start of a whole new blog!!)

***********FRIDAY DECEMBER 4TH 2009 - I AM OFFICIALLY AN R.Ph.*************