Mosby's Review for the Pharmacy Technician Certification Examination

I took the exam in October 2012. I felt that many of the questions stress the "role of Pharm tech." so you should look into them. A lot of math problems similar to ones that I did in the book. One conversion question. Many drug related questions.Use this book and the CD that comes with it to prepare the exam for just about a month or two, you will pass the exam. Repetition is the key. Start memorizing the most common 100 or 200 drugs as you begin because the list is in the back of the book so if you don't look for it you might end up studying the drugs at the very end like me...lol (not fun to do in a week or so).Overall excellent book!BTW, If you are completely new to Pharmacy and drugs, I also recommend the Pharmacy Technician book by APhA (green book). Very detailed and great explanation with many pictures!

OK, so when i first bought the book I was concerned it wasnt going to be all that helpful. But this is what two of my co-workers and my pharmacists recommended. I studyied the book for about 6 weeks then i took my test. I am proud to say that with this book and the cd it comes with, i passed with flying colors! The book not only shows you what you need to know, it gves you great detail and has many practce question and tests.I would recommened ths book to all techs trying to get nationally certified!

I bought this book after taking a class at a career college for a year, and seeing a copy of it on my pharmacy tech program director's desk. This book is also sold in Barnes and Noble, but I would recommend getting it off Amazon as it is much cheaper! Anyways, on to the review. I wasn't sure what to think of this book when I first got it. There just seemed to be so much information in there, that at times it was hard to know where to start. (Let me also just say that I took the ExCPT exam, not the PTCB as my state will recognize either one, and the ExCPT exam was cheaper and you got your results back right away, go to [...] for more info) So I started reading through the chapters one at a time. The book is split up into three sections, each focusing on a different area of the test, with Chapter review questions at the end of each Chapter. The book also contains seven practice exams, and comes with a CD-ROM that has ten more practice exams on it. I would suggest studying everything. I also liked that the practice test format was the same as on the national test, in other words there were 100 multiple choice questions on the practice tests, and 100 on the national test. I also found it helpful that on the CD-ROM there were over 600 flash cards covering brand/generic name drugs, abbreviations, supplement and vitamin information etc. Also the CD-ROM practice tests are good because there are two ways to study. You can either study by taking a timed practice test, which gives you an hour to complete the 100 questions, and you wait till the end of the test to get your feedback, or you can take an untimed test with 100 questions and get immediate feeback on whether your answer was right or wrong, as well as the rationale for why. This book covers everything you need to pass either exam, as long as you study. I also liked that the book itself had an entire section devoted to nothing but pharmacy calculations, as I thought this and the brand/generic name drugs were my weakest areas. It doesn't have the best explanations for how to solve the math problems, so I would probably get another book for that, such as the one used at my school, Calculations: The Pharmacy Technician Series as this other book is very well laid out and explains things in a logical manner. If you don't know how to convert from farenheight to celsius or your metric to household conversions and things like that before you buy the Mosby's book, then it won't help you much. I found the actual practice problems in this Mosby's book to be harder than the ones I got on the national test. The only reason for giving Mosby's four stars instead of five was because the way to solve the math problems was not explained well enough. I took my national test and passed on the first try, so if I can do it, anyone can do it. Overall, an excellent study guide. I studied during a three week break from classes, and still passed on the first attempt.

I just PASSed the PTCE exam in Indiana on my first try. I studied roughly 3-4 hours per day for 3 weeks with ONLY this book and the CD that comes with it. About 10 questions on the test were the exact same as the questions on the CD (10- 100Q practice exams). If you can do the math problems on the practice CD you will be fine for the real test. Most math qs were easier on the PTCE than on the practice CD. I didnt even use the practice tests that were in the book. I memorized the top 200 drug list and memorized the books content. If you know the top 200 drugs you can use the process of elimination to figure out the answer. I didn't use the flash cards on the CD i made my own top 200 drug flashcards to memorize them. The content of the exam is evenly distributed so make sure you know all of the info in the book. There are mistakes on the math problems on the CD but if you take the proper steps you will notice them. Most of the mistakes are obvious.. Some say there are a couple other mistakes in the book but its not worth worrying about. Good luck!

My current employer will pay for my test if I stay a certain length of time so I'm holding off on taking it. However, I used this book for a couple weeks and I think it's definitely the best PTCB exam prep book on the market. It focuses on each section of the test and within each chapter, they concentrate on what's most likely to be on said section. I definitely felt like if I'd decided to take the test, I would have been prepared.

I received almost all of my pharm tech "training" from this book, and it was excellent. I easily passed the exam, and most of the exam questions were exactly like the ones in Mosby's practice tests. It contains multiple, very useful practice exams and a bonus disc with flash cards and tests. I didn't read through the whole book (or learn all of the drug names), but I took the practice tests and reviewed what I realized I most needed to know. This is a great review tool!

This is an excellent book to test your knowledge; however, I did not find it to be a "stand alone book" like I thought it would be. There are examples on how to solve the math problems, but only 1 problem...so you can not test yourself on what was just covered unless you go to the test section and read thru about 100 questions to find a question to be sure your have the process down. Again, it has lots of test questions that I think would assist you in passing the state test.

There are mistakes in the book. Some of the calculation answers are wrong as well as a few mistakes in the text as well. Overall this book is helpful to some extent but does not suffice to cover in detail, all the different competencies relevant to the Pharmacy Technician exams in Canada.