Ten top tips for your Pre-reg year!
Your Pharmacy degree becomes somewhat irrelevant if you want to be a pharmacist, that is because you do not graduate as a pharmacist but you qualify as one!
The pre-registration year is going to be the toughest year of your entire life (it certainly was for me).
I hope this post helps you as no one said these things to me and I wish they did!
Nick and some of his Pharmacy Colleagues - they have a group chat which they basically use as a medicines information (MI) chat in which they share things that they haven’t seen before such as “propranolol for the liver” or Lisinopril for a 4 year old!
1. Don’t start revision until after Christmas. This is incredibly important as I started my revision back in September and burned myself out around Easter!
2. Get up early. You will not understand how hard it is to pick up a pen after a full day in work, you will finish at 6, get home and make food about 7 and finish about 8. You need to find the drive to revise etc. and that was by far the hardest challenge.
3. NETWORK, this will help you in later life and give you an advantage when the registration assessment approaches as people will share notes.
4. Save, save, save -saving £80 a month will help to cover all the fees that you will have to pay towards the end of the year and furthermore for mocks, the exam and GPhC registration! This comes to around £1000 - saving £80 a month for 12 months gives you £960!
5. Go to mocks and conferences! The mocks aren’t like the real exam, some are 100x harder than the real thing but if you do them you will learn the syllabus a lot more in depth.
6. Maximise the time you have on the weekends. By all means make time for friends and family but remember your revision will allow you to pass that exam, going out with your friends all the time won’t. It’s a small sacrifice for a big return, they will understand!
7. Make use of every method of revision, if it’s reading or listening to a podcast, I found Sureena Speaks and Abraham the Pharmacist to be reliable resources.
8. If you see something in work and wonder what the use of it is, look it up, then ask for 5 minutes if you’re still unsure. Your tutor should be there to support you and would allow you to go and look it up, especially if it is something they aren’t too familiar with either! I was lucky to have one of the greatest and most supportive tutors a pre-reg could have asked for!
9. Be confident ...but not too confident. When you’re delivering information you will find things on the guidelines that may not be abided to in practice. The year is going to teach you a lot about people, not just pharmacy!
10. Don’t worry about jobs, be cautious of those saying that “the job market is drying up”, and “it’s hard to find a job nowadays”. There are plenty of options out there!