Pre-reg june 2011 exam

[atishghai]

I found the calculations quite tricky. I'm hoping I passed them as I'm pretty sure I got 6 wrong and can't afford to get any more wrong. Closed book was fine, ran out of time for the open book paper. Good luck to all!

[martydevinejr]

I got 4 d;s in a row :-S

d c d d c e b a e c a b d d d a d c b c

[Jonno]

I'm pretty sure that the successful treatment question asked for "the average cost per succesfully treated person"...I initially just did 70% of the cost but then went back and re-read the question...eventually got 780 something.

[kl06229]

I got 4 d;s in a row :-S

d c d d c e b a e c a b d d d a d c b c

It's funny how you can remember exactly what you've answered. Anyone remember the actual questions?

[naf123]

The question asked for the average cost per patient not the cost of successful treatment, and so I read that as such and got £385. Whether the question was intentionally straightforward or whether the method was supposed to be different I don't know but it was a bit of an odd question.

the average cost per patient would be 550 if you think like that! the fact is each treatment costs 550. so 30% failed and the successful patients also have to absorb the cost (remember the taxpayer is paying for it all! every unsuccessful treatment is an burden on the taxpayer! i cant imagine the average cost being cheaper than 550!!!!)

so, basically lets think like this

100 people take the drug at cost of £550 each. That's £55,000 worth of drugs.

The treatment helped 70 people (£38,500) however AT THE SAME TIME 30 people didnt work (£16,500) So the actual cost of treatment goes up because the 70 successful people have to absorb the cost of failure. (ie "cost effectiveness")

so lets split up the £16500 by 70 which gives approx £235 per person.

so 550 + 235 gives £785

If there was a drug that costs £700, with a 90% success rate. Whats the cost per successful treatment? ok we are paying £70,000 for 100 patients, but 10 patients costs 7000 and that's absorbed by 90 people giving a price of £777 per successful treatment.

Now if our good friends at NICE saw that drug A costs £550 and drug B costs £700 to treat cancer - they may say "hey, lets recommend drug A because its £150 cheaper per person than drug B. But on closer examination on success rates, drug B would appear to be cheaper for the reason I have stated above being cost effectiveness of £777 as opposed to drug A cost effectiveness of £785!!!

Note

[JayEm]

I thought the closed book paper was awful, must have guessed about 15 questions at least! There were loads of odd questions which I hadn't come across before in sample papers like the one about a hospital deciding to prescribe for 28 days....???

Open book and calculations were much better apart from being pushed for time; hopefully done enough to pass! Oh and I got £785 and 101 tablets, that's all I remember.

[naf123]

I thought the closed book paper was awful, must have guessed about 15 questions at least! There were loads of odd questions which I hadn't come across before in sample papers like the one about a hospital deciding to prescribe for 28 days....???

Open book and calculations were much better apart from being pushed for time; hopefully done enough to pass! Oh and I got £785 and 101 tablets, that's all I remember.

that awful warfarin question! I was stumped and thought instead of wasting time trying to think it out, I drew out a calender of 28 days and wrote down numbers ie 6,3,4,3,4 etc and came to 101! :-) took me a good 5 mins to do a relatively simple question :-(

[kl06229]

I thought the closed book paper was awful, must have guessed about 15 questions at least! There were loads of odd questions which I hadn't come across before in sample papers like the one about a hospital deciding to prescribe for 28 days....???

Open book and calculations were much better apart from being pushed for time; hopefully done enough to pass! Oh and I got £785 and 101 tablets, that's all I remember.

101 tablets was the answer for the warfarin calculation, got the same answer. Hmm, £785 sounds does like the right answer. I had to guess a lot in that CB paper. Reckon at least 15 for me too. That one about 28 day prescribing, I remember putting 2 out of 3 options as being correct. Think I put risk benefit and the other was cost effectiveness or something like that. Think the malaria question was supposed to be 90 tablets.

[JayEm]

that awful warfarin question! I was stumped and thought instead of wasting time trying to think it out, I drew out a calender of 28 days and wrote down numbers ie 6,3,4,3,4 etc and came to 101! :-) took me a good 5 mins to do a relatively simple question :-(

Haha, I did exactly the same thing! Wasn't taking any chances, lol. Only thin I regret is not leaving enough time to go over the calcs again. :-(

Oh, just remembered another calculation; I got 90 tabs for the malaria one. The child was going away for 21 days but you have to give enough to cover 2 days before and a week after so a total of 30 days, 1 TDS = 90 tabs.

[naf123]

Haha, I did exactly the same thing! Wasn't taking any chances, lol. Only thin I regret is not leaving enough time to go over the calcs again. :-(

Oh, just remembered another calculation; I got 90 tabs for the malaria one. The child was going away for 21 days but you have to give enough to cover 2 days before and a week after so a total of 30 days, 1 TDS = 90 tabs.

Yes correct. had to look up child weight, establish 3 tablets daily, and yup 90 is the answer.

Remember the 15mins or 20 mins question was such a dilemma! I went for 15 mins cos 20 mins would be an overdose. (flow rate was no more than 50mg/min )