u/DrBosnak

I’ve been following the conversations in this group for quite a while, and one pattern kept coming up again and again: many pharmacy students are looking for a serious study partner, but finding the right person is surprisingly difficult.

At first, I thought this was just an occasional issue. Then I looked into it more carefully and realized it is a much bigger problem. There are plenty of general social platforms, messaging apps, and study groups, but very few tools built specifically for pharmacy students and pharmacists who want to prepare together in a focused and professional way.

That is why I created RxExamPal.

While building it, I spent a lot of time thinking about one important question: how do we make sure this does not become another Tinder, WhatsApp, or random social network?

The answer, I believe, is to keep the purpose very clear.

RxExamPal is not about meeting people casually. It is about finding the right person to study with.

The matching is based on things that actually matter for studying: the exam you are preparing for, MPJE state when relevant, exam timeline, timezone, availability, study style, and the topics you want to work on. I am also designing the study sessions so that they remain focused and productive rather than turning into endless chatting.

Now I would like to do something a little different.

I do not want to present this to you as a finished product and simply say, “Here it is.”

I would like us to build it together.

RxExamPal is completely free, and it is open to pharmacy students and pharmacists anywhere in the world. I wrote the software myself, which means that when you tell me, “This part is confusing,” “We need this feature,” “This does not work well,” or even “This is a bad idea,” I can actually go back and change it.

Many of you know me here primarily as an educator. Over the years, one of the things I have valued most is seeing students help each other, encourage each other, and eventually become colleagues.

Perhaps we can create something with that same spirit here.

Not another social network.

Not another dating-style matching app.

But a small professional space created around pharmacy, learning, collegiality, and helping each other succeed.

So I would really like the first group of students to test it, challenge it, and help shape what it becomes.

Let’s build something for pharmacy students and pharmacists, together.

RxExamPal
Don’t prep alone.

https://www.rxexampal.com

I spend probably too much time reading NAPLEX posts here :)
One thing started bothering me, so I went back and looked at around 100 posts/questions from students preparing for the exam.
Not scientific research. Just me being curious.
What surprised me was how often the problem was not really “I don’t know pharmacology.”
It was things like:
“I know the material but I can’t decide between two answers.”
“I keep making stupid calculation mistakes.”
“I studied the whole chapter but the question looks completely different.”
“I don’t know what to focus on anymore.”
“I keep postponing because I never feel ready.”
Calculations came up a lot, obviously. But so did anticoagulation, diabetes/insulin, infectious diseases, oncology and some of the smaller topics people tend to leave until the end.
But there was another pattern I found more interesting.
A lot of people seem to be measuring preparation by how much material they have covered.
Finished 70% of UWorld.
Read X chapters.
Did X thousand questions.
Studied X hours.
I’m not sure those are the best measures.
After teaching pharmacy students for many years, I think there is a point where doing more content gives less return than getting better at making decisions with the content you already know.
Especially when two answers both look reasonable.
Maybe the last phase of NAPLEX preparation should be less:
“What else haven’t I studied?”
and more:
“Why did I choose the wrong answer when I actually knew the topic?”
Curious what recent test takers think.
For those who passed recently, what caused you more trouble in the final weeks: knowledge gaps or decision-making under pressure?

I spend probably too much time reading NAPLEX posts here :)
One thing started bothering me, so I went back and looked at around 100 posts/questions from students preparing for the exam.
Not scientific research. Just me being curious.
What surprised me was how often the problem was not really “I don’t know pharmacology.”
It was things like:
“I know the material but I can’t decide between two answers.”
“I keep making stupid calculation mistakes.”
“I studied the whole chapter but the question looks completely different.”
“I don’t know what to focus on anymore.”
“I keep postponing because I never feel ready.”
Calculations came up a lot, obviously. But so did anticoagulation, diabetes/insulin, infectious diseases, oncology and some of the smaller topics people tend to leave until the end.
But there was another pattern I found more interesting.
A lot of people seem to be measuring preparation by how much material they have covered.
Finished 70% of UWorld.
Read X chapters.
Did X thousand questions.
Studied X hours.
I’m not sure those are the best measures.
After teaching pharmacy students for many years, I think there is a point where doing more content gives less return than getting better at making decisions with the content you already know.
Especially when two answers both look reasonable.
Maybe the last phase of NAPLEX preparation should be less:
“What else haven’t I studied?”
and more:
“Why did I choose the wrong answer when I actually knew the topic?”
Curious what recent test takers think.
For those who passed recently, what caused you more trouble in the final weeks: knowledge gaps or decision-making under pressure?

One of the most common mistakes I see when mentoring pharmacy students is this:
They immediately start looking for the correct answer.
Experienced clinicians rarely think that way.
Instead, they first ask:
“Is there an option I can confidently eliminate?”
One clinical clue is often enough to rule out an answer.
For example:
Severe renal impairment → eliminate contraindicated medications.
Pregnancy → eliminate unsafe drugs.
Documented allergy → eliminate the offending drug class.
Hyperkalemia → eliminate medications that may worsen potassium.
Notice what happened.
You didn’t find the correct answer.
You simply made the question easier.
That’s how clinical reasoning develops.

Let’s practice.
A 72-year-old man with atrial fibrillation and stage 4 chronic kidney disease (eGFR 24 mL/min/1.73 m²) presents with an uncomplicated urinary tract infection.
Which option would you eliminate first?
A. Nitrofurantoin
B. Amoxicillin/clavulanate
C. Cephalexin
D. Fosfomycin

Before reading the explanation…
Which clinical clue immediately caught your attention?

The key clue is eGFR 24 mL/min/1.73 m².
That alone should make you eliminate nitrofurantoin before comparing the remaining options.
Notice that we didn’t start by searching for the correct answer.
We started by reducing the number of possible answers.
That simple habit makes many NAPLEX questions much more manageable.

💎 Dr.Bosnak’s Clinical Pearl #1
Good clinical decisions often begin by eliminating what cannot be true.

Students: “How do I memorize all these drugs?”
Professor: “Don’t.”
Students: 😳

One question has followed me throughout my years of teaching pharmacy:
“Why do I keep forgetting what I studied yesterday?”
Most students assume they have a bad memory.
I rarely think that’s the real problem.
The human brain isn’t designed to remember isolated facts very well.
It’s designed to remember meaning.
Think about the patients you’ve met during your clinical rotations.
You probably don’t remember every laboratory value or every medication on their chart.
But you remember the patient with severe neutropenia who had to postpone chemotherapy.
You remember the patient whose INR was dangerously high before a dental procedure.
You remember the child whose antibiotic dose had to be recalculated.
Why?
Because your brain attached those facts to a real clinical situation.
Unfortunately, many students study the opposite way.
They memorize lists of drugs.
Lists of adverse effects.
Lists of formulas.
Lists of guidelines.
Then they wonder why everything disappears a week later.
After teaching pharmacy students for many years, I noticed that the students who retained knowledge the longest did something different.
Instead of asking,
“How do I memorize this drug?”
they asked,
“When would I actually need this drug, and what decision would I have to make?”
That simple shift changes everything.
Now the drug has a patient.
The formula has a purpose.
The guideline has a consequence.
You’re no longer memorizing information.
You’re rehearsing a clinical decision.
That’s why I believe pharmacy education should include more patient cases, more clinical reasoning, and fewer disconnected facts.
Because pharmacists aren’t rewarded for remembering pages.
They’re trusted for making good decisions.
And interestingly…
Once your brain understands why something matters, remembering it usually becomes much easier.

After teaching pharmacy students for many years, I’ve noticed something interesting.
Students spend a lot of time asking questions like:
“Which question bank is best?”
“Which resource guarantees a pass?”
“How many hours should I study?”
They’re reasonable questions.
But they’re rarely the questions that make the biggest difference.
Here are a few things I wish every NAPLEX student knew before opening the first book.
1. The exam isn’t trying to trick you.
Most questions are asking whether you can make a safe clinical decision with the information in front of you.
Sometimes we make the exam look harder than it really is because we’re expecting hidden traps in every question.

2. Memorization has limits.
You can memorize every drug in a chapter.
But if you can’t recognize why a patient’s renal function changes the answer, memorization won’t help much.
The students who improve the fastest eventually stop asking:
“What is the right answer?”
and start asking:
“What is this question trying to make me notice?”

3. Calculations are about patients, not numbers.
I’ve taught pharmacy calculations for years.
The strongest students weren’t always the fastest with formulas.
They were the ones who understood what the result actually meant.
A dose.
An infusion rate.
An ANC.
A creatinine clearance.
These numbers only matter because they change patient care.

4. Don’t confuse familiarity with understanding.
Reading the same notes five times can feel productive.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes your brain is simply recognizing the page.
Real learning happens when you can explain your decision without looking at the answer.

5. You don’t need to know everything.
Every pharmacist I’ve worked with even experienced clinical pharmacists looks things up.
The goal of the NAPLEX isn’t perfection.
It’s demonstrating that you can think safely and make appropriate clinical decisions.

The students I remember most weren’t always the ones with the highest practice scores.
They were the ones who slowly became more confident because they learned to think like pharmacists instead of trying to memorize like students.
If you’re preparing for the NAPLEX today, keep going.
Every patient case you understand is worth more than another page you’ve memorized.
Good luck! you’ve probably learned more than you think.

I’ve been practicing prescription review cases recently and came across this one:

Patient with documented penicillin allergy
Prescribed: Amoxicillin 500 mg

At first glance, it looks routine.

But there’s a critical issue here.

What would you do in this situation?

I was reviewing a prescription today with my students, and interestingly, most of them initially said it was correct.

29-year-old female
Acute strep pharyngitis
Prescription: Amoxicillin 500 mg BID

Everything looks standard… until you check one detail:
History of anaphylaxis to penicillin

What surprised me wasn’t the mistake it was how easy it was to miss under time pressure.

I’ve been noticing this a lot while teaching:
Students usually know the concepts, but during exam prep (especially for things like NAPLEX), they mix up details like:

• allergies
• contraindications
• similar drug classes
• dosing patterns

So I started building small interactive cases instead of classic flashcards — more like “spot the problem” scenarios.

Curious:
What’s the type of mistake you personally miss most often under pressure?