Customer Reviews

Mosby's Review for the Pharmacy Technician Certification Examination, 2e

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is basically what you need to review for the exam. It's not ALL you need, however.

If you have no previous pharmacy experience:
1. Read an actual text, such as The Pharmacy Technician by Perspective Press
2. Then use a review book, such as Mosby's Review for the Pharmacy Technician

If you have the general gist of pharmacy, the CD that comes with this book is pretty much all you need. The CD contains flashcards, a study mode, and an exam mode for you to practice reviewing and testing in a format similar to the real test.

If you don't know what to study:
1. Calculations and conversions (flow rates, alligations, dosages, etc.--know these solidly)
2. Drug regulation laws/agencies (HIPAA, DEA forms, FDA, etc.)

By taking practice tests, you will pick up on random tidbits of information and begin to recognize drug names. Take a lot, because there were questions on the actual test I had seen before. As for the Top 200 drugs, you don't know which ones will be asked on the test, so just guess on these or familiarize yourself with a few.

Overall, I recommend these 2 books for anyone who wants to take the PTCB Exam:

1. The Pharmacy Technician by Perspective Press
2. Mosby's Review for the Pharmacy Technician

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 www.nationaltechexam.org 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 took a class at the local college before using this book to go over some practice tests and I have noticed that on a few questions the answers given by the answer key were incorrect. I thought that I was wrong at first, but I brought it to my teacher's attention and she actually agreed that the answer key was incorrect. On one question I found a digit of a number missing on the correct answer, so there was no correct answer choice available and on another one the definition for qid was left out of the possible answer, so again there was no correct answer to choose from. Those are just minor thing I found, but I began to wonder if all the answers on drug names etc were correct. I have no way of finding out until I actually work in a pharmacy for a while. I like the CDrom that comes with it... but again, I have found some errors on it regarding feedback on answers. Eg, it rated my answer as incorrect, but the explanation showed my choice of answer correct. I would still recommend the book, but I would double check answers if you are unsure about the answer key. At the price you pays for it, I expected it to be proof-read and double checked. Overall, it's good practice and you should get enough out of it to pass the PTCE.
Update: If I would take away another star I would do so... I've studied a lot more over the last week and have encountered some more "proof-reading" errors. Now, this tool is making me more insecure about my knowledge.

I had no pharmacy experience prior to reading this book and passed the PTCB exam after about 2 weeks of hardcore studying. Its a great book if you can get past the few errors it has. I reccomend this book to anyone who doesnt have the time or money for classes. It was worth every penny. Everything is well explained with over 1000 practice questions.

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!

The book is concise and covers only what you NEED to know. It does contain a few typos regarding abbreviations for grams and grains which can lead to confusion. The CD review is worth the money without the book; there are just short of 700 flash cards to sharpen your skills whenever you have 15 minutes to study. Great package, well presented. The CD-based tests give you instant feedback as to why the answer is wrong and improve your critical thinking skills.

I bought this book and studied with it as my only resource for about 6 weeks. I passed my test and found that the companion CD was worth the entire purchase price. This was a great study guide for me!

This is the best book you can ever get. I didn't have any experience in pharmacy before and after reading this book i gave exam. I passed exam with great success. Working in pharmacy helps for sure but by just reading this book you can pass the exam for sure!

this book is great. i would reccomend it to anyone studying for the pharmacy tech certification exam.

I bought this book for the CD w/practice tests, but there are WAY TOO MANY ERRORS!!!! It would be humorous if my passing the PTCB exam were not dependent upon this review, but it really makes me mad. There are math errors, for one thing, so you spend tons of time trying to figure why you got the problem wrong, and it turns out to be the CD!! Or huge errors in drug names---wow!!!---I would venture to say out of every 100 questions, there are 4 to 5 errors, with wrong answers.....to me, that is a lot.

So--buyer, BEWARE!