DHA exam for pharmacists.

Where pharmacists sit in the guideline

DHA files Pharmacist, Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacy Technician under Allied Healthcare. They are not a category of their own, so a search for pharmacists in the guideline leads you into the allied health section.

All three have 150 questions and a stated time of 3 hours. DHA says that time includes the registration, the process introduction and the exam content, so the time for answering is shorter, and DHA does not say by how much. The pass score is 60 percent for Pharmacist, 70 percent for Clinical Pharmacy and 55 percent for Pharmacy Technician.

DHA can change the content, the format or the pass score without updating the guideline, so read each figure as the position on the date we checked it. DHA reports pass or fail only and does not share your score.

The official content areas

The guideline lists 14 areas for the Pharmacist exam. It gives no percentages. The Assessment Manual says results use the number of correct answers and the weighting of each domain, but DHA does not publish the weights, so the order of the list says nothing about how many questions each area has.

• Toxicology
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Sterile and Nonsterile Compounding
• Pharmaceutics/Biopharmaceutics
• Pharmacognosy and Dietary Supplements
• Pharmacy Calculation and Compounding
• Clinical pharmacogenomics
• Infection Control
• Pharmacokinetics
• Pharmaceutical Care and Disease State Management
• Medication Safety
• Over the Counter Medication
• Pharmacy Law and Ethics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutic Decision Making

Pharmacy Technician areas

The Pharmacy Technician exam lists 9 headings: Pharmacy Calculation, Pregnancy and Lactation, Sterile and Nonsterile Compounding, Infection Control, Medication Safety, Pharmacokinetics, Pharmaceutical Care and Disease State Management, Over the Counter Medication, Pharmacy Law and Ethics. Again there are no weights. The Clinical Pharmacy title has its own code, but we did not find a separate content list for it in the guideline, so check the current guideline for that title.

Qualification and experience for the title

The PQR (April 2025, table 18.27) says a Pharmacist needs a BSc in Pharmacy or a Doctor of Pharmacy and two years of experience after qualification in the related field. It adds a note that experience with pharmaceutical companies or as a sales representative is not accepted. A Pharmacy Technician needs a diploma in pharmacy of at least two years and two years of experience.

A Clinical Pharmacist has several routes in the PQR, such as a PharmD of at least six years or a two-year postgraduate qualification leading to a PharmD or a master's in clinical pharmacy, with experience rules for each. A break in practice of more than three years brings extra CME or CPD and the exam, and DHA generally does not license people with a gap of more than five years.

The PQR has an exam equivalency table for pharmacists. It lists countries whose licence, with a good standing certificate and a recent qualification or no gap in practice, can exempt a pharmacist from the exam. Check it for your own country, and remember the exemption covers the exam only. It does not replace verification or experience.

What Meddex covers today

Meddex has 121 questions tagged for pharmacists. 30 of them sit in the eight pharmacy subjects written for this role (calculations, pharmaceutics, pharmacokinetics, therapeutics, medicinal chemistry, toxicology, pharmaceutical care and law and ethics). The rest are the shared clinical core that every profession sees. Counts come from the question bank when the site is built.

The eight subjects are Meddex's own split, not DHA's. They merge some of DHA's 14 areas, for example pharmacognosy with medicinal chemistry, and infection control sits in the shared core. The pharmacy bank is small next to the nurse bank, so expect repeats if you practise a lot.

Full-length mocks are not offered for this role yet. They need a bank large enough to fill a 150-question paper with questions written for the profession, and the bank is not there yet. You can practise by subject, and the free assessment gives you ten mixed questions and your weakest areas straight away. Pharmacy Technician and Clinical Pharmacy have no questions of their own. None of this is a promise of a pass. The questions are original, not DHA questions, and DHA publishes no sample set.

How to revise, without guessing the weights

DHA lists Pharmacy Calculation and Compounding as a content area, so practise calculations (doses, dilutions, concentrations, infusion rates) until you can show your working under time. DHA also lists Pharmaceutical Care, Medication Safety and Over the Counter Medication, which suggests scenario questions about counselling and safe choices. That is an inference from the headings, not something DHA states.

Go through the 14 headings once and mark each as strong, fair or weak. Spend the first weeks on the weak ones, keep a short error log, and move to timed sets once most of your scores are steady. Two longer guides go deeper: one on revising as a pharmacist and one on calculations and counselling practice.