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The OPRA™ exam assesses whether candidates have the necessary knowledge and understanding of the biomedical, pharmaceutical, and clinical sciences underlying the practice of pharmacy in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). It is designed to ensure that overseas trained pharmacists trained who wish to practice as registered pharmacists in Australia or NZ meet the standards set by the respective countries.
The OPRA™ exam does not examine pharmacy practice issues specific to the Australian or NZ context such as legislation or practice standards. These are examined in later assessments included in the internship period as a successful candidate moves towards general registration.
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The OPRA™ exam is a closed book, computer-based exam delivered at approved test centres.
It contains 120 multiple-choice questions, each with a single best answer. The correct answer is the best or most correct answer.
You will have 150 minutes (2 hours and 30 minutes) to complete the exam.
Before the exam you are given 5 minutes to read and agree to a non-disclosure agreement and 10 minutes to complete a tutorial designed to familiarise yourself with the exam software.
After the exam, you will have 5 minutes to complete an exam feedback survey.
These pre- and post-exam activities do not count towards the exam time. The 150-minute timer will begin when you see the first question of the exam.
Each exam session has multiple live versions of the exam which are randomly allocated. All questions are also presented randomly.
The OPRA™ exam encompasses five content areas.
|
Content area |
Percentage of questions allocated |
|
Biomedical sciences |
20% |
|
Medicinal chemistry and biopharmaceutics |
10% |
|
Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics |
10% |
|
Pharmacology and toxicology |
15% |
|
Therapeutics and patient care |
45% |
General description
Normal and abnormal body functions including at cellular level, and the manner in which diseases and disorders affect normal body functions. It includes the causes (aetiology) of disease and disorders and the recognition of normal and abnormal body functions
|
Content assessed |
Examples of topics (non-exhaustive) |
|
Physiological processes and normal bodily function for all systems |
Central nervous, digestive, cardiovascular, lymphatic, nervous, respiratory, urinary, endocrine, and reproductive systems, and their integration; blood and other body fluids. |
|
Pathophysiology |
Alteration of normal physiological processes and genesis of disease states by genetic factors, environmental, chemical/drug causes, physical injury or infectious agents or other causes. |
|
Medical microbiology |
Pathogenesis of infections (bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other parasites). |
|
Immunology |
Immune responses and defence mechanisms against infectious agents. Vaccines and vaccine preventable disease. |
|
Disorders affecting bodily fluids |
Fluid and electrolyte disorders, metabolic acid-base disorders, and blood disorders. |
|
Symptoms and physiological values of disease states and disorders |
Signs, symptoms, of disease, diagnostic tests and laboratory investigations associated with normal and abnormal body functions, disease states, and disorders. |
General description
Principles of drug design and development and the factors that influence and/or determine the materials and methods used in the formulation of medicines.
|
Content assessed |
Examples of topics (non-exhaustive) |
|
Physicochemical properties of drugs |
Physicochemical properties of drugs of relevance to drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME). |
|
Formulations for the delivery of drugs |
Properties of solids, solid dosage forms, solvents, solutes, solutions, aqueous and non-aqueous solutions, liquid-liquid solutions, solid-liquid solutions, gas-liquid solutions, suspensions, and emulsions. |
|
Drug and chemical stability |
Mechanisms of degradation (hydrolysis, oxidation), zero and first order degradation, effect of temperature and pH. |
|
Solubility |
Factors affecting solubility, dissolution, partition, thermodynamics of pharmaceutical solutions. |
|
Drug formulation |
Materials and methods used in formulation of drug delivery systems for common routes of administration, including oral, pulmonary, transdermal, parenteral, ophthalmic, nasal, rectal, vaginal. |
|
Pharmaceutical microbiology |
Preservation, antimicrobial agents, and sterilisation processes. |
General description
Factors that influence how medicines are absorbed, distributed, metabolised, and eliminated (ADME) from the body as well as how pathophysiological changes impact ADME and selection of treatment options.
|
Content assessed |
Examples of topics (non-exhaustive) |
|
Drug metabolism |
Chemical and biochemical basis for drug action and pathways for drug metabolism, drug absorption, disposition, biotransformation, elimination, receptor theory, signal transduction mechanisms, molecular pharmacology. |
|
Principles of pharmacokinetics |
Bioavailability and bioequivalence, biological half-life, elimination and clearance concepts, distribution, protein binding, steady state considerations. |
|
Factors affecting drug impacts |
Determinants of drug onset, drug duration, and effect of factors such as disease/conditions and diet on absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion. |
|
Evaluation of pharmacokinetic data |
Kinetics of drug interactions, drug concentration vs time curves and interpretation of pharmacokinetics of low-therapeutic-index drugs. |
|
Using pharmacokinetic data in treating patients |
Use of pharmacokinetics to calculate, evaluate, and individualise drug therapy including monitoring and adjustment of doses in renal and hepatic dysfunction, loading does and time to reach steady state. |
General description
How medicines work in the body, how common chemicals and poisons exert their effect, recognition of toxic and adverse effects and their management.
|
Content assessed |
Examples of topics (non-exhaustive) |
|
Impact of drugs on the body |
Effects of drugs on organs and body systems, dose-response relationships, agonists, partial agonists, antagonists, enzyme inducers/substrates/inhibitors, genetic polymorphism, and clinical relevance. |
|
Receptor theory |
Drug receptor interactions, agonists/antagonists, dose-response curves, desensitisation, and super sensitivity. |
|
Mechanisms of action of drugs |
Mechanisms of action of various drug categories as they relate to organs and disease states. Including but not limited to central nervous system pharmacology, cardiovascular pharmacology, haemostasis and thrombosis, cancer chemotherapy, antihypertensives, drugs for dyslipidaemia. |
|
Adverse drug reactions |
Adverse drug reactions side effects of medicines and management and mechanisms of drug-drug interactions. |
|
Drug interactions |
Drug-drug interactions, drug-receptor interactions, drug-receptor binding, enzyme-substrate relationships, hydrophilic and hydrophobic interactions. |
|
Drug toxicity and treatment |
Drug and chemical overdose and antidotes. Signs and symptoms of toxicity and mechanism of toxicity and its management. |
|
Factors causing changes in the pharmacology and toxicity of drugs |
Modulators of drug pharmacology and toxicity such as pharmacologic factors (disposition, biotransformation, renal elimination), physiological factors (age, sex, genetics, pregnancy etc), and pathophysiological factors (liver disease, renal dysfunction). |
General description
Clinical application of content areas 1-4 in patient care. It includes understanding of the principles of health promotion, disease prevention, quality use of medicine, selection of medicines for special populations and provision of medicines information.
|
Content assessed |
Examples of topics (non-exhaustive) |
|
Screening |
Calculation of common patient assessment parameters such as body mass index (BMI) and creatinine clearance. |
|
Dose calculations |
Amount of drug, number of doses, dosing based on body weight/ body surface area/ age/or other pharmacokinetic parameters, ratio and proportion, percentage, stock solutions, dilution, and concentration, alligation, electrolyte solutions (milliequivalents/milliosmoles), reconstitution, infusion flow rates, isotonicity. |
|
Primary health care |
Selection of appropriate management options for treating illness and maintaining health and identification of circumstances where nonpharmacological treatment is more appropriate. |
|
Safe and effective use of medicines in populations requiring extended consideration |
Consideration for medicine use, precautions, and contraindications in special populations: the elderly, children less than 12 years of age, during pregnancy or while breastfeeding. |
|
Safe and effective use of medicines |
Monitoring and review of management options including medicines use and promoting adherence to medicines. |
|
Harm minimisation |
Knowledge about strategies for minimising misuse and abuse of medicines at patient and community level. |
|
Health promotion and disease prevention |
Knowledge about general approaches for health promotion and disease prevention. Measures for promoting wellness, proper use of nonpharmacological treatment options. |
|
Confidentiality |
Understanding of general principles about maintaining confidentiality and professionalism when providing medicines information and handling patient records. |
Questions in the OPRA™ exam meeting the following standards for consistency:
OPRA™ exam questions are designed to test cognitive processes at the remembering/recall, comprehension/understanding and application derived from Bloom and Anderson’s classification of learning and ability levels.
|
Cognitive/Ability Level |
Definition |
Approximate (percent (%)) distribution of questions |
|
Remembering |
Recalling or recognising specific information. Ability to remember a concept, fact, principle in somewhat the same form in which it was learned. Health professionals must have command of vast amounts of knowledge such as interactions, protocols medical terminology committed to memory. |
55% |
|
Comprehension |
Understanding of information given. Communicating concept/principle in a new or different form. Health practitioners should be able to explain a principle or concept to others, classify/compare or categorise items with similar or dissimilar characteristics. |
30% |
|
Application |
Using methods, concepts, principles, and theories in various situations. Using what one has learned from a variety of areas to find a solution to a problem. |
15% |
The OPRA™ exam uses a scaled scoring system to ensure fairness and consistency across multiple versions of exam forms. The passing score is determined through evidence-based psychometric standard-setting processes involving subject matter experts. This passing score reflects the minimum standard that must be met to apply for provisional registration as an intern pharmacist and begin supervised work and training.
Success is determined by the level of ability or performance compared to this standard, not by comparing performance to other candidates or by an arbitrary score. Passing the OPRA™ exam depends on your overall performance across the entire exam. You must meet the passing standard set for your randomly allocated exam form to pass the OPRA™ exam.
We collaborate with psychometricians to undertake robust analyses of scoring and exam standards to maintain the reliability and validity of OPRA™ exam results. Of the 120 questions in the OPRA™ exam 90% are ‘scored’ questions, which count towards your result. The remaining 10% of questions are ‘unscored’ questions. This means they are included in the exam for calibration and testing, but do not count towards your result.
Unscored questions may relate to any content area of the exam, but they will not count towards the target percentage of questions for any of the content areas. Unscored questions are evenly distributed across all five content areas. You will not be made aware which of your questions are scored, and which are unscored.
To protect the security and integrity of our assessments, we do not share the questions and answers from your exam attempt(s). Additionally, we do not disclose raw scores or percentages of your exam results, as they do not accurately reflect the difficulty of the questions or whether the exam standard was met.
We will provide you with a result report that indicates whether you met the overall standard or were unsuccessful.
Feedback on your performance in each content area is also provided to offer general guidance for continual professional development. Please note that the content area scores on your result report are not used to determine your result. Passing the OPRA™ exam is based on your overall performance across the entire exam, not within each content area.
OPRA™ exam results are available within approximately 4 weeks of the exam. The result release date for each session is available on our website. You will receive an email notification once your exam result is available and information on how to access it.
Exam results are not subject to review. If you feel your exam performance was negatively affected by an incident or administrative procedure, you can find more information on the options available to you in our Appeals policy.
If you do not pass the exam you may apply to sit another exam session. You will be required to register and pay the exam fee for each exam attempt, and to re-sit the full exam.
To help you prepare for the OPRA™ exam, we provide one official sample paper that you can download.
The sample paper contains questions to help you practise. These questions are no longer used, but they will help you understand:
If you want to practise the sample paper under exam conditions, you'll need to answer all 120 questions in 150 minutes (2 hours and 30 minutes).
Download OPRA™ exam sample paper (PDF 36 pages)
Real OPRA™ exams are delivered online at an approved test centre. Our exam provider, Pearson Vue, provides an online sample test to experience the exam software before your exam day.
The content of our exams is based on the latest information, which you can find in relevant:
We do not endorse any specific external reference sources. Ensure you are utilising up-to-date and evidence-based resources to guide your preparation.
We do not endorse any OPRA™ preparation programs or offerings.
We encourage you to explore official professional organisations for Australian or New Zealand pharmacists to support your professional development and enhance your readiness to practise. These organisations include:
We wish you all the best with your exam preparations.
You will receive emails from us as you progress in your journey. We do ask that you check and read our emails carefully.
Please contact us if you require additional support; we are here to assist with any questions you may have.
Email us at info@pharmacycouncil.org.au