What is the cost of the course?

The cost of the course depends on the location (Toronto vs. Vancouver). A substantial early bird discount is available. For pricing, please visit our registration page where all available dates and prices are listed. The fee can be paid with a cheque / money order or credit card via our secure registration web site.

When are your courses offered?

Our courses are held every six months about a month before the PEBC OSCE exam. For exact dates, please consult our schedule.

What is your 1-student/1-station policy?

Our 1-student/1-station policy means we have as many stations as we have students so you will never have to share a station with another student. It also means that the pharmacist assessor and the standardized patient will be solely focused on you. This system which to our knowledge is unique to PharmAchieve allows you to receive unparalleled attention and personalized feedback from many highly qualified instructors.

What are the hours of your course?
PharmAchieve Toronto courses begin at 10am and typically end at 5pm. Our Vancouver courses begin at 9:30am and finish at 4:30pm.

What is PharmAchieve's teaching philosophy? 
PharmAchieve believes the key to success in the OSCE is to practice as many scenarios as possible under conditions that mirror the exam as closely as possible. Thus while we do include a substantial classroom and lecture component, we put more emphasis on practicing under conditions that mirror the OSCE.

Following each scenario students discuss with the pharmacist and standardized patient how they can improve in subsequent scenarios. By the end of the course students will have completed 2 days of lecture and groups exercises, will have received feedback on at least 84 scenarios, will have watched and received feedback on an additional 40 scenarios, will have reviewed 12 videotapes of their performance, and will have received written and verbal feedback on every case.  This allows our students to develop the skills they need to pass the OSCE and to improve their counseling.

Where are your students from?
PharmAchieve's students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and include both Canadian and international pharmacy graduates.

What hotel is closest to PharmAchieve?

The closest hotels are the Delta Chelsea and Hilton; however, we do not recommend booking these hotels directly (see the answer to the next question). It should be noted that all hotels in downtown Toronto near a subway are a short commute to PharmAchieve because downtown subway stations are just one minute apart.

Do you offer discounted accomodations?

We recommend using the name-your-own-price feature of priceline.com. When using this service you do not get to specify the hotel you will be staying at, but instead specify the region on a map where the hotel must lie, the minimum hotel star rating, and the price you are willing to pay. Using this method students are often able to secure hotel rooms at 4-star hotels in downtown Toronto such as Sheraton for about $70 to $95 per night. Another service that often offers good rates is hotwire.ca.

How far is your class from the airport?

Our class is located in downtown Toronto. Accordingly, we recommend accounting for at least one and a half hours to get to the airport in case of heavy traffic.

What is your pass rate?
Because the OSCE results are mailed to our students, rather than to PharmAchieve, we cannot definitively say what our pass rate is. But among the students whom we have received feedback from, we estimate our pass rate to be approximately 90%. This is significantly higher than published pass rate of 39% for International Pharmacy Graduates (first attempt).

What is your satisfaction rate?

In written satisfaction surveys, students have given PharmAchieve stellar ratings: 98.7% of students to date have given PharmAchieve the highest possible score (on a 5 point scale) to the following questions which they had the opportunity to answer on the last day of the course, with the instructors not present.

a) How satisfied are you overall with PharmAchieve?

b) Would you recommend PharmAchieve to a friend?

c) If you could go back to your decision to pick PharmAchieve, would you still pick PharmAchieve?

We are proud of these ratings -- and are happy to share copies of the surveys upon request.