Exams / PTCB / What is on the PTCB exam?

What is on the PTCB exam?

The PTCB exam (PTCE) covers four content areas. Medications is the largest at 35% of the exam, followed by patient safety and quality assurance, order entry and processing, and federal requirements.

Checked against the source on October 15, 2026.

PTCB’s current outline took effect on January 6, 2026. If your study materials are older, they were written for the previous outline, which weighted the areas differently.

Content area Share of the exam
Medications 35%
Patient safety and quality assurance 23.75%
Order entry and processing 22.5%
Federal requirements 18.75%

Examples from each area

  • Medications includes generic and brand names, drug classes, storage requirements and drug stability.
  • Patient safety and quality assurance includes high-alert medications and look-alike, sound-alike medications.
  • Order entry and processing includes calculations, Sig codes and abbreviations, and label details such as NDC numbers, lot numbers and expiration dates.
  • Federal requirements includes controlled substance prescriptions, DEA schedules and drug supply chain serialization.

TODO: the topic summaries above paraphrase the outline’s knowledge statements. Have a pharmacy reviewer confirm the wording before launch.

Calculations

PTCB marks several outline statements as calculation-based, including doses, days’ supply, concentrations and dilutions. Our dosage calculation formulas page covers the standard setups.

Sources

  1. PTCB, PTCE content outline, effective January 6, 2026. Content areas, their shares of the exam and calculation-based statements. Checked October 15, 2026.

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More about the PTCB

How many questions are on the PTCB exam?

The PTCB exam (PTCE) has 90 multiple-choice questions. 80 of them count toward your score and 10 are unscored. You get 1 hour and 50 minutes to answer them.

What is the PTCB passing score?

The PTCB passing score is 1,400. PTCB reports PTCE results as scaled scores from 1,000 to 1,600, so you need 1,400 or higher to pass.

Dosage calculation formulas

Most dosage calculations use one of four setups. Divide the dose ordered by the dose on hand and multiply by the quantity, convert weight to kilograms for mg/kg orders, divide volume by hours for mL/hr, and multiply by the drop factor for drops per minute.

PTCB practice test

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