How to use PharmRevise

PharmRevise works best a little at a time, most days, led by your own results rather than by what you feel like revising. This page explains how.

The idea: little and often, guided by your stats

Revising by feel tends to send you back to the topics you already like. PharmRevise keeps a record of every answer you give and uses it to show you what to do next. Two questions drive it:

• What don't you know yet? You can't list the gaps you've never noticed. PharmRevise finds them by showing you questions you haven't seen and by tracking accuracy area by area.
• What have you forgotten? Something you got right a month ago can slip away. PharmRevise watches for answers that go from right to wrong.

We suggest ten to twenty minutes most days rather than one long session at the weekend. It's a habit, not a promise about your result.

Two ways to answer questions

• Practice. You see whether you were right, and why, straight after each question, with the source the answer is based on.
• Mock paper. Exam conditions, with no feedback until the end. Each mock has a seed. Enter the same seed and the same number of questions and you get the same questions, as long as you're on the same version of the bank; the answer options are shuffled for each person. Share the seed with your study group, never the questions, and you can all sit the same paper and compare scores. Our terms of use (section 6) don't allow sharing the questions themselves in any way, including in group chats and study groups.

What you don't know: unseen first, then your weak areas

Suggested next, on the Progress tab, picks the areas where you're clearly below your own average or have seen under a quarter of the questions, and builds a 20-question drill from questions you haven't seen yet first, then the ones you got wrong last time. Train my weaknesses starts with the questions you got wrong last time, then ones you haven't seen.

The Progress tab shows where the gaps are:

• Mastery by area, weakest first. Your accuracy in each clinical area, worst at the top.
• Calculations by family, weakest first. The same view for each calculation type.
• Most-examined areas vs the rest. How you're doing in the areas the GPhC's framework lists first, which are the ones it assesses most often, against everything else.

On the Home screen, Your weak areas lists topics where, after at least five attempts, your results are clearly below 80% (for example 3 right out of 5, or 14 out of 20). Train my weaknesses builds a session from them.

What you've forgotten: the review queue and Slipping

The review queue. Get a question wrong and it comes back tomorrow. Get it right then and it comes back in 3 days, then 8, then 20. Get it right after that and it leaves the queue: you've shown you can hold on to it. Due for review shows what's waiting today, and Review pipeline shows what's due now and what's coming back over the next month.

Slipping. These are questions you got right before and wrong the last time you saw them. In the app's words: "That is forgetting, not a gap - the fastest marks to win back." One tap starts a session of up to 20 of them.

Redo my wrong answers and Review flagged are there for anything you want another go at, and every finished session offers to redo the ones you missed.

What the app can't see

The app only notices forgetting when you meet a question again. A question you get right the first time never enters the review queue, and a question that has left the queue isn't booked again. If you've forgotten one of those, PharmRevise won't know until it comes up.

So once or twice a week, generate a short Part 2 paper (set the number of questions to 20 or 30). It draws at random from the whole bank, which brings older questions back around, and anything you've lost shows up in Slipping.

Planning to your sitting

Set Your sitting and PharmRevise counts the days. Plan to your sitting divides the questions you haven't seen yet by the days left, giving you a daily number to aim for. Suggested next points you to the area to work on.

Score range, pace and progress

• Score range. A range for your clinical and calculation work, based on your answers to PharmRevise questions. It is not a prediction of your assessment result and is not connected with the GPhC.
• Pace. Your average time per question against an exam budget of about 75 seconds a question in Part 2 and 3 minutes in Part 1, worked out from the GPhC's timings. Slowest areas shows where the time goes.
• Progress over time. A day-by-day chart of your accuracy, over 7 days, 30 days or all time, with your last-7-days figure beside it; and your recent sessions.

A daily routine we suggest

1. Due for review first. It's short, and these are the questions you're about to forget.
2. Then Slipping, if there's anything in it.
3. Then a new set: an area from Suggested next or Train my weaknesses, or a short calculations set.
4. Once a week: a timed full mock, and a short Part 2 paper.

Your account and your devices

Sign in and your answers sync, so you can start on your phone and carry on on a laptop. You can delete your account and its answer history yourself from the Account screen. The privacy notice explains what isn't removed straight away: our providers' short-lived logs, what Cloudflare keeps from the sign-in bot check, any emails you sent us, a record that the deletion happened (kept for 24 months, without your answers), and the progress saved on your own device until you clear it.

If a question looks wrong

It may well be. Each written question names the source its answer key is based on, so check it there. Then tap the report button (!) at the top of the question, say what's wrong and tap Send report. The report reaches us with the question's reference attached. If you can't see the button, email hello@pharmrevise.co.uk with the question.

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Not affiliated with or endorsed by the General Pharmaceutical Council. PharmRevise is for revision only and is not clinical advice. Score ranges, plans and suggestions are estimates about your revision on PharmRevise questions and do not predict your assessment result. See our terms of use and privacy notice.