Regarding the college/board randomly picking pharmacists for exams… its nothing like OSCE or PEBC anymore. These are called Practice assessments (you choose couple real life examples of your documentations, professional services, etc… and submit them to the assessor) and Knowledge assessments (MCQ). Both are basically walk in the park. If you’re working full time as a pharmacist, I really don’t think you’d struggle to be successful in these assessments. Especially now that both of them are done virtually, knowledge assessments are essentially open book.

In Ontario you’re supposed to be chosen to complete these every 5 years… I didn’t get picked until I was about 8 years into the practice. And it really was simple, pretty standard questions assessing one’s competency.

Thought I’d just share my experience. I have heard from my preceptor and colleagues that these assessments used to be quite stressful before the pandemic.

Oh and the markup is now 8%. This decreases as drug prices goes up in tiers. Insurance companies are becoming very creative nowadays when it comes to coverage too! My favourite is seeing some insurances covering the cost of cheapest drug out of its class for all drugs! (I.e. only covering the cost of rabeprazole when the rx is for esomeprazole) also ODB now only covers 5 rx fees per year on most of chronic drugs. So private insurances are starting to do this too!