The BCACP Exam has been growing in popularity over the last few years.  This is a very challenging exam with passing rates historically in the 60% range.  I surveyed a wide range of online resources as well as reached out to some of my Board Certified Ambulatory Care Pharmacist friends to help give you a sense of how to prepare to pass the BCACP exam.

BCACP Study Tips

Here’s my tips for helping prepare you to pass the BCACP exam.

1. Before you develop a study schedule, I would strongly encourage you to review the content outline an assessment of what you feel you have a good handle on versus what you don’t.
2. Just like BCPS, you have to know statistics.  I would not be caught off guard by this.  If you know stats well, this should be free points for you on the BCACP exam.  You can find the majority of this under Domain 3 of the content outline (Translating Evidence into Practice)
3. Understand different practice models and the business of ambulatory care clinical pharmacy.  Billing codes, developing a practice, and strategies for monetization are all fair game and part of Domain 4 (Practice Models and Policy).
4. Be sure you are prepared for the length of the exam. I know some that are slow exam takers.  I recommend at LEAST one practice exam to ensure that you will have enough time. You MUST get through all the questions or you are giving up points.
5. One question I often get asked is how to prepare for the clinical content.  If you have a good clinical background, I think you will have decent success. This certainly doesn’t guarantee passing as there are numerous domains as described above. I would first focus my efforts on BIG topics that you need some work on.  Asthma, COPD, Diabetes, Hypertension, Anticoagulation, Infectious disease are a few big topics that come to mind.  If you don’t have a good handle on one or more of these, that is where I would start when reviewing clinical content.
6. Guidelines. You need to understand what are the best practices or standards of care from those guidelines and be able to apply them.  The intent of the exam is to assess clinical reasoning, drug knowledge and decision making.  Grey areas of clinical practice are really hard to test on.
7. Understand boxed warnings, common adverse effects, contraindications, and important drug interactions for the most common medications.

BCACP Exam Background Information

You should also understand some background information about the exam.

• The exam is given in the Spring and Fall with the application deadline being approximately a couple months prior to the test window.  For the fall 2018 exam period, the deadline is August 1st.
• The exam tests you on 5 different domains.  This domains vary in % of the exam, so be aware of this.
• The exam is 175 questions in length.  You have just over 4 hours to take the exam.
• The questions are all multiple choice.  Only one answer is correct which can help you narrow things down.

As far as study materials, we’ve created an All Access Pass (6 months or 1 year) which is the best value for your money.  It contains practice questions, a PDF handout (800 slides of notes), a separate stats study guide, and 20+ hours of video content to help prepare you to pass the BCACP exam.

If you have any thoughts or comments, please feel free to share below! Best wishes to those of you seeking BCACP certification!