The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) exam, also known as the "Registration Assessment" or "Pre-reg exam," is the professional licensing exam for pharmacists in the United Kingdom. It evaluates the knowledge and skills of pharmacy graduates to ensure they meet the required standards for safe and effective pharmacy practice.
The GPhC exam has two components:
- Written Assessment: Tests knowledge of pharmaceutical science and pharmacy practice.
- Practical Assessment: Evaluates clinical skills and patient-facing competencies.
To be eligible, candidates must complete an accredited pharmacy degree program and fulfil additional requirements set by the GPhC.
The GPhC is the regulatory body of pharmacy in the UK (there are currently talks that this may be handed over to the CQC in the near future). Have a look at our refined GPhC Syllabus to see what they expect of pharmacy pre-registration (pre-reg) students. The GPhC sets the exams for graduate pharmacy students wishing to practice in the UK as licensed pharmacists. Before the exam can be taken, students have to complete satisfactorily 45 weeks of work in a pharmacy as a pre-reg. The schedule for which is shown below:
Once this process has been successfully completed, the candidate may then sit for the pharmacy exam...
GPhC Exam
The examination takes place on two occasions each year:
- Summer (usually the last Friday in June) - usually first-timers.
- Autumn (usually the last Friday in September) - usually second-timers, i.e. students who have failed their first or second attempt.
Key points to note about this process are:
- The pre-reg takes at least 52 weeks (if done full-time) this will be conducted under the supervision of a pre-registration tutor
- The pre-registration student must be formally assessed 'signed off' at least four times by their tutor
- Once this is completed, the student must pass the registration assessment (you can have only three attempts at this)
- There are limits on the time allowed to finish pre-registration training, and these are explained in the GPhC Criteria for registration as a pharmacist.
In recent years, quite a few changes have been made to the exam. This mainly has been a shift in focus to concentrate more on patient scenarios and "acute" pharmacy calculations.
The exam itself consists of two parts and are sat on the same day:
- Part 1 - a 2-hour calculations paper
- Part 2 - a 2.5-hour multiple-choice paper
There is no need to bring any reference materials into the exam (this was the case previous to 2015). All reference materials will be provided on the day inside the "resource pack". This is just an A4 document referencing:
- extracts from a British National Formulary (BNF)
- a Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC)
- diagrams and photographs
- a medication chart.
To pass the GPhC Exam, a candidate must pass Part 1 and Part 2 in the same sitting. Once passed the exam, you do not automatically become a licensed pharmacist, you will need to pay a fee to the GPhC so that you can get your GPhC number and get entered on their register. Have a look at our guide for newly registered pharmacists for more information.
Online GPhC Exam Questions
The courses offered on this PharmacyCPA website have been created by experienced UK-based pharmacists who monitor the exit experiences of students every year and generate mock questions and exams to help our 200+ student cohort every year. If you are interested have a look at the courses we offer on our front page.