It’s also worth considering other common types of reference material used in pharmacy. Beyond the BNF, and the BNF for children, commonly used reference materials include:
Martindale: The complete drug reference
– This provides information on conventional and complementary drugs, proprietary names used internationally, and treatments for disease
Clarke’s Analysis of drugs and poisons
– This is the definitive source of information for drugs and poisons. This can be used by everyone form hospital pharmacists through to forensic toxicologist and forensic laboratories
– Stockley’s Drug Interactions
– This is the world’s most comprehensive reference on drug interactions. It provides evidence based information on interactions, covering therapeutic drugs, proprietary medicines, herbal medicines, and drugs of abuse.
British and European Pharmacopoeias
– This provides quality standards for UK Pharmaceutical substances and European products as well, according to EU law.
The above are unlikely to be used in the exam itself, but are great sources of information, and if you can get access to them through the hospital library, for example, are a good way of familiarising yourself with the challenge of finding information fast from a source that you might not be used to using.