OSSSC Pharmacist CRE-2023 Syllabus and Exam Pattern
Syllabus
OSSSC's Pharmacist written test is one paper of 100 MCQs for 100 marks in 2 hours, with negative marking of 0.25 mark per wrong answer. Sixty of those questions come from the Diploma in Pharmacy syllabus, 25 from practical skill, 10 from Arithmetic and 5 from English.
Download Official Syllabus PDFThe PDF opens on the official site. Every topic in it is explained in plain language below — you do not have to open the PDF to read the syllabus.
Compiled from the official syllabus · check it against the official link
One paper, one hundred marks, two hours ↑
OSSSC recruits Pharmacists through a single written test. There is no interview, no skill test and no second paper — section 10 of the advertisement says in as many words that there shall be a Written Test only, and the whole selection rests on it plus the document verification that follows.
The paper is one hundred multiple-choice questions carrying one hundred marks in two hours, and it can be delivered either on an OMR sheet or as a computer based recruitment test. The advertisement states that the exact mode will be notified later, so prepare for both and assume nothing.
| Papers | Subjects of Written Test | No. of Questions | Maximum Marks | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| One Paper | Questions on subjects as per syllabus of Diploma in Pharmacy | 60 | 60 | 2 hours |
| One Paper | Questions based on practical skill | 25 | 25 | 2 hours |
| One Paper | Arithmetic (HSC Standard) | 10 | 10 | 2 hours |
| One Paper | English (HSC Standard) | 5 | 5 | 2 hours |
| Total | Total | 100 | 100 | 2 hours |
The one line OSSSC prints where a syllabus would go ↑
Sub-section (ii) of section 10 is the entire syllabus statement, and it is a single sentence: the standard syllabus and subjects for the written test will be as per the syllabus of Diploma in Pharmacy. That is all OSSSC publishes. There is no chapter list, no topic-wise weighting and no unit breakdown anywhere in the fourteen pages of this advertisement.
This matters, because a great many pages on the internet print a confident OSSSC Pharmacist topic list. No such list exists. What does exist is the document OSSSC is pointing at — the Diploma in Pharmacy syllabus framed by the Pharmacy Council of India under Regulation 7 of the Education Regulations 2020, which is a public PDF and which we have carried in full further down this page.
So read the table below as a chain of custody rather than as an OSSSC syllabus: OSSSC names the source, and the source is the Pharmacy Council of India.
| What the paper asks | Marks | Where the syllabus for it actually comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Subjects as per syllabus of Diploma in Pharmacy | 60 | The PCI D.Pharm syllabus under the Education Regulations 2020 — 11 theory courses, reproduced chapter by chapter below. |
| Questions based on practical skill | 25 | The 10 practical courses of the same PCI D.Pharm syllabus — the laboratory and counter work of the diploma. |
| Arithmetic (HSC Standard) | 10 | Not defined by OSSSC beyond the words 'HSC Standard'. No topic list is published for it. |
| English (HSC Standard) | 5 | Not defined by OSSSC beyond the words 'HSC Standard'. No topic list is published for it. |
Negative marking, and the score you must actually clear ↑
Sub-section (iii) of section 10 sets negative marking at 0.25 mark per question for a wrong answer or for marking more than one option. There is no separate mention of unattempted questions being penalised, so a blank stays a blank.
The qualifying percentages are set out immediately under the pattern table, and they are category-based. Note carefully that Socially and Educationally Backward Class candidates are not in the relaxed list — the relaxed 30 per cent applies to ST, SC, PwD, Ex-Servicemen and Sportsperson categories only.
The percentages in the third column are the document's own figures. The mark equivalents in the fourth column are our arithmetic on a hundred-mark paper, not a separate official statement — we have marked them as derived so that you know which number came from where.
| Category | Minimum qualifying marks (as stated) | Equivalent on a 100-mark paper (DERIVED) |
|---|---|---|
| ST, SC, PwD, Ex-Servicemen and Sportsperson | 30% | 30 marks (our arithmetic: 30% of 100) |
| All other candidates, including SEBC and unreserved | 35% | 35 marks (our arithmetic: 35% of 100) |
| Rule | What the advertisement states |
|---|---|
| Negative marking | 0.25 mark deducted per question for a wrong or multiple answer. |
| Mode of test | MCQ type in OMR system or CBRT mode; the exact mode to be notified later. |
| Number of papers | One paper only. There shall be a Written Test only — no second stage of examination. |
| Extra marks | Short-term COVID-19 healthcare workers with at least 3 months of COVID-19 duty are allowed 5 per cent extra marks on the total marks, as a one-time measure for this recruitment. |
Where the marks sit, and what that means for your study time ↑
Eighty-five of the hundred marks are pharmacy — sixty from the Diploma in Pharmacy subjects and twenty-five from practical skill. That figure of eighty-five is our own addition of the document's two rows, not a number OSSSC prints, and we are flagging it as derived for that reason.
The remaining fifteen marks are Arithmetic and English at what the advertisement calls HSC Standard. Fifteen marks is small next to eighty-five, but it is also the easiest fifteen in the paper, and with negative marking in force a candidate who is careless there can hand back more than they gain elsewhere.
The practical-skill twenty-five is the block most candidates under-prepare, because it has no separate syllabus of its own. It is drawn from the ten practical courses of the D.Pharm — dispensing, labelling, health screening, counselling, laboratory testing, device handling — all of which are listed later on this page.
| Block | Marks | Share of the paper (DERIVED) | What it is drawn from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diploma in Pharmacy subjects | 60 | 60% of 100 | The 11 theory courses of the PCI D.Pharm syllabus. |
| Practical skill | 25 | 25% of 100 | The 10 practical courses of the same syllabus. |
| Pharmacy total (DERIVED) | 85 | 85% of 100 | Our addition of the two rows above; OSSSC prints them separately. |
| Arithmetic (HSC Standard) | 10 | 10% of 100 | No official topic list published. |
| English (HSC Standard) | 5 | 5% of 100 | No official topic list published. |
| General total (DERIVED) | 15 | 15% of 100 | Our addition of the two rows above. |
Who the paper is for: post, pay, age and the registration OSSSC insists on ↑
The Pharmacist post advertised here is a district cadre post under the Health and Family Welfare Department of the Government of Odisha, which means a selected candidate is posted and transferred within one district only.
One eligibility condition is easy to miss and disqualifies people every cycle: a Pharmacist candidate must already have registered with the Pharmacist Council in the state and must hold a valid registration certificate as on the date of the advertisement, and that certificate has to be uploaded online. Passing D.Pharm is not by itself enough.
| Item | What the advertisement states |
|---|---|
| Post | Pharmacist, district cadre, under the Health and Family Welfare Department, Government of Odisha. |
| Advertisement | No. IIE-39/2023-906(C)/OSSSC dated 15 December 2023, for Combined Recruitment Examination-2023(III). |
| Pay | Pay Scale 25500-81100, Pay Matrix level-7, Cell-01. |
| Qualification | +2 Science under the Council of Higher Secondary Education, Odisha or equivalent, and Diploma in Pharmacy or B.Pharm from a Government Medical College and Hospital of the State or another recognised private institution duly approved by AICTE, with the examination conducted by the Odisha Pharmacy Board. |
| Age | Not below 21 years and not above 38 years as on the date of the advertisement. |
| Age relaxation | 5 years for SC, ST, SEBC and Women; 10 years for Persons with Disabilities; the period of defence service for Ex-Servicemen. A candidate in more than one category gets only the single most beneficial relaxation. |
| Contractual Pharmacists | Upper age limit 45 years as on the date of the advertisement, on uploading a self-attested appointment letter from the employer. |
| Registration | Registration with the Pharmacist Council in the state, with a valid certificate as on the date of the advertisement, uploaded online. |
| Examination fee | None. The advertisement states that no examination fee is payable for applying. |
Vacancies, and everything that happens after the written test ↑
Annexure I of the advertisement lists the Pharmacist vacancies district by district for all thirty districts of Odisha. The total row reads 1,002, and the special-category subtotal of 264 is stated by the annexure itself to be included in that 1,002 rather than added to it.
After the written test the sequence is fixed and short. A provisional merit list is drawn on the written-test marks plus any COVID-19 weightage; candidates are screened at 125 per cent of the advertised vacancies, category and special-category wise; those screened are called for document verification; and a counselling for choice of post and district is held at Bhubaneswar.
One detail worth knowing before you sit the exam: OSSSC does not verify any original document before the written test. Admission to the test is provisional and rests entirely on what you declared online, so an error in the application surfaces only after you have already passed.
| Stage | What the advertisement states |
|---|---|
| Total Pharmacist vacancies | 1,002 across the 30 districts listed in Annexure I. |
| Special category within that total | 264 — Ex-Servicemen 104, Sportsperson 35, hearing impaired 58, orthopaedically impaired 67 — stated to be included in the total, not additional. |
| Merit list | Provisional, on the sum of written-test marks and any COVID-19 healthcare worker weightage. |
| Screening | Qualified candidates shortlisted at 125% of the advertised vacancies, category and special-category wise. |
| Document verification | Originals verified by the appointing authorities, not by the Commission, before the appointment order. |
| Counselling | Held at Bhubaneswar, for choice of post and district; choice confers no right to a particular district. |
| Results | District-wise provisional results published on the Commission's website, provisional until the requisitioning authority accepts the candidature. |
At a glance
| Conducting Body | Odisha Sub-ordinate Staff Selection Commission (OSSSC) |
| Post Name | Pharmacist |
| Official Website | osssc.gov.in |
| State | Odisha |
The D.Pharm course structure the sixty marks are drawn from ↑
The Pharmacy Council of India's Education Regulations 2020 were notified in the Gazette of India in October 2020, and the syllabus framed under Regulation 7 is the document OSSSC's one-line syllabus statement points at. It runs to 21 courses — 11 theory and 10 practical — spread across Part I and Part II, with a Part III of practical training on top.
The overall metrics the Council itself prints are 825 theory hours, 600 practical hours, 500 practical training hours and 275 tutorial hours. Every one of the 11 theory courses is 75 hours, which is why the chapter tables further down each add up to 75 — a useful check that nothing has been dropped.
The two tables below are the Council's own course lists for Part I and Part II. Everything after them is the chapter-by-chapter syllabus of the eleven theory courses, carried in full — 143 topic entries in all. That figure of 143 is our own count of the hour-bearing rows in the Council's eleven chapter tables and is DERIVED; the Council prints the rows but does not total them.
| Course Code | Name of the Course | Total hours | Tutorial hours | Hours per week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ER20-11T | Pharmaceutics – Theory | 75 | 25 | 3 |
| ER20-11P | Pharmaceutics – Practical | 75 | — | 3 |
| ER20-12T | Pharmaceutical Chemistry – Theory | 75 | 25 | 3 |
| ER20-12P | Pharmaceutical Chemistry – Practical | 75 | — | 3 |
| ER20-13T | Pharmacognosy – Theory | 75 | 25 | 3 |
| ER20-13P | Pharmacognosy – Practical | 75 | — | 3 |
| ER20-14T | Human Anatomy & Physiology – Theory | 75 | 25 | 3 |
| ER20-14P | Human Anatomy & Physiology – Practical | 75 | — | 3 |
| ER20-15T | Social Pharmacy – Theory | 75 | 25 | 3 |
| ER20-15P | Social Pharmacy – Practical | 75 | — | 3 |
| Course Code | Name of the Course | Total hours | Tutorial hours | Hours per week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ER20-21T | Pharmacology – Theory | 75 | 25 | 3 |
| ER20-21P | Pharmacology – Practical | 50 | — | 2 |
| ER20-22T | Community Pharmacy & Management – Theory | 75 | 25 | 3 |
| ER20-22P | Community Pharmacy & Management – Practical | 75 | — | 3 |
| ER20-23T | Biochemistry & Clinical Pathology – Theory | 75 | 25 | 3 |
| ER20-23P | Biochemistry & Clinical Pathology – Practical | 50 | — | 2 |
| ER20-24T | Pharmacotherapeutics – Theory | 75 | 25 | 3 |
| ER20-24P | Pharmacotherapeutics – Practical | 25 | — | 1 |
| ER20-25T | Hospital & Clinical Pharmacy – Theory | 75 | 25 | 3 |
| ER20-25P | Hospital & Clinical Pharmacy – Practical | 25 | — | 1 |
| ER20-26T | Pharmacy Law & Ethics | 75 | 25 | 3 |
Pharmaceutics (ER20-11T) — all 14 topic entries ↑
Pharmaceutics is where the D.Pharm course begins and where the largest share of the pharmacy questions traditionally comes from, because it is the science of actually making and handing over a medicine. The official table below runs to fourteen hour-bearing entries across seven numbered chapters — chapter 5 alone is split into eight separate dosage-form rows, each with its own hour allocation.
The left column is the chapter number exactly as the official table prints it. The second column is the syllabus entry, with the Council's own technical terms kept as they stand. The hours column is the Council's allocation, and the 14 entries below add up to the 75 hours the course is worth. The last column is our reading of what the entry asks for and how to work it.
| Chapter | What the official syllabus lists | Hours | What it covers and how to prepare |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | History of the profession of Pharmacy in India in relation to pharmacy education, industry, pharmacy practice and the various professional associations; Pharmacy as a career; Pharmacopoeia — introduction to IP, BP, USP, NF and the Extra Pharmacopoeia, and the salient features of the Indian Pharmacopoeia. | 7 | The opening chapter and the cheapest marks in the paper. Fix the four pharmacopoeias by country and issuing body first, then learn what makes the Indian Pharmacopoeia different — it is the one an Odisha pharmacist is legally working to. Dates and association names are pure recall, so make a one-page list and revise it weekly. |
| 2 | Packaging materials — types, selection criteria, and the advantages and disadvantages of glass, plastic, metal and rubber as packaging materials. | 5 | A four-way comparison, so learn it as a table and not as paragraphs: material, one strength, one weakness, one typical dosage form it is used for. Examiners ask this as 'which material would you choose for X and why', and a table answers that in one line. |
| 3 | Pharmaceutical aids — organoleptic agents (colouring, flavouring and sweetening); preservatives — definition, types with examples and uses. | 3 | A small chapter that gives up marks easily. Learn two named examples for every single class — one colour, one flavour, one sweetener, one preservative from each type — because the question is almost always 'give an example of'. |
| 4 | Unit operations — definition, objectives and applications, principle, construction and working of: size reduction (hammer mill, ball mill); size separation (classification of powders according to IP, cyclone separator, sieves and standards of sieves); mixing (double cone blender, turbine mixer, triple roller mill, Silverson mixer homogenizer); filtration (theory of filtration, membrane filter, sintered glass filter); drying (fluidized bed dryer, freeze drying); extraction (definition, classification, method and applications). | 9 | The largest single chapter in this course and the one with the most named machines. Do not memorise descriptions — for every machine learn three things only: what it does, one working principle in a sentence, and one product it is used for. The IP classification of powders and the sieve numbers are recall items and appear almost every year. |
| 5 | Tablets — coated and uncoated tablets, and various modified tablets (sustained release, extended release, fast dissolving, multi-layered and similar). | 8 | Tablets carry the most hours of any dosage form here, and for good reason — they are what a district pharmacist dispenses all day. Be able to name the three granulation routes, say which modified tablet solves which clinical problem, and list the standard quality-control tests with their acceptance idea. |
| 5 | Capsules — hard and soft gelatine capsules. | 4 | A short, high-yield entry. Learn the hard-versus-soft comparison as a pair of opposites — shell, filling, manufacturing route, and what each one is chosen for — and know the capsule size numbering, because that is a favourite one-mark question. |
| 5 | Liquid oral preparations — solutions, syrups, elixirs, emulsions, suspensions, and dry powder for reconstitution. | 6 | The definitions matter more than the recipes: an elixir is not a syrup, and an emulsion is not a suspension. Fix each definition by its vehicle and its physical state, then attach one official example to each — that pairing answers most of the questions asked from this entry. |
| 5 | Topical preparations — ointments, creams, pastes, gels, liniments and lotions, suppositories and pessaries. | 8 | Eight hours for a group that looks simple, which tells you the examiner goes deep here. Learn the ointment bases by class, know why a cream is an emulsion and a paste is not, and be able to name the base used for suppositories and its melting behaviour. |
| 5 | Nasal preparations and ear preparations. | 2 | Only two hours, so keep it proportionate: definition, the one property that matters (isotonicity for nasal, viscosity and warmth for ear), and correct administration technique. The administration technique is also asked in the practical-skill section, so learning it once pays twice. |
| 5 | Powders and granules — insufflations, dusting powders, effervescent powders and effervescent granules. | 3 | The effervescent pair is where the marks are. Know the acid and the base that react, why the granules must be dried to a low moisture level, and why they are packed in moisture-proof containers — that last point links straight back to the packaging chapter. |
| 5 | Sterile formulations — injectables, eye drops and eye ointments. | 6 | Sterility, pyrogen freedom, isotonicity and the container closure — those four ideas run through every question in this entry. Learn the sterilisation methods with the temperature and time actually used, because a wrong number here is a wrong answer even when the method is right. |
| 5 | Immunological products — sera, vaccines, toxoids, and their manufacturing methods. | 4 | This entry connects directly to the immunisation work a district pharmacist actually does. Separate active from passive immunity in one sentence each, then learn the cold-chain requirement for each product class — the cold chain reappears in the Hospital Pharmacy course, so it is worth learning properly once. |
| 6 | Basic structure, layout, sections and activities of pharmaceutical manufacturing plants; quality control and quality assurance — definitions and concepts, current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP), and an introduction to calibration and validation. | 5 | The single distinction the examiner wants is quality control versus quality assurance — one checks the product, the other builds the system that makes the product right. Say that difference in your own words before you learn anything else here, then attach cGMP, calibration and validation to it. |
| 7 | Novel drug delivery systems — introduction, classification with examples, advantages and challenges. | 5 | The newest chapter and the one most likely to be asked as a straightforward definition-and-example question. Learn the classification, keep one real marketed example per class, and be honest about the challenges — cost and stability — because 'advantages and challenges' is how the entry is worded. |
Pharmaceutical Chemistry (ER20-12T) — all 13 topic entries ↑
Pharmaceutical Chemistry carries thirteen chapters and the longest lists of named compounds anywhere in the course. In the official syllabus certain compounds are marked with an asterisk, and only those carry an expectation of knowing the chemical structure; the rest are learnt at classification, use, stability and storage level.
The left column is the chapter number exactly as the official table prints it. The second column is the syllabus entry, with the Council's own technical terms kept as they stand. The hours column is the Council's allocation, and the 13 entries below add up to the 75 hours the course is worth. The last column is our reading of what the entry asks for and how to work it.
| Chapter | What the official syllabus lists | Hours | What it covers and how to prepare |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction to pharmaceutical chemistry — scope and objectives; sources and types of errors — accuracy, precision, significant figures; impurities in pharmaceuticals — source and effect of impurities in pharmacopoeial substances, importance of limit tests, principle and procedure of limit tests for chlorides, sulphates, iron, heavy metals and arsenic. | 8 | Limit tests are the backbone of this chapter and of the practical paper. For each of the five, remember the reagent, the colour or turbidity produced, and what it is compared against — that triplet answers every form the question takes. |
| 2 | Volumetric analysis — fundamentals, acid-base titration, non-aqueous titration, precipitation titration, complexometric titration, redox titration; gravimetric analysis — principle and method. | 8 | Five titration types, and the mark is usually for matching the right one to the right substance. Build a table of titration type, the indicator used, and one drug assayed by it, and the whole chapter collapses into something you can revise in five minutes. |
| 3 | Inorganic pharmaceuticals — pharmaceutical formulations, market preparations, storage conditions and uses of haematinics, gastro-intestinal agents (antacids, acidifying agents, adsorbents, protectives, cathartics), topical agents, dental products and medicinal gases. | 7 | Every class here has a named list of compounds in the official document. Learn them by clinical use rather than by chemistry — a patient asks for something for acidity, not for an aluminium salt — because that is also how the practical-skill questions are framed. |
| 4 | Introduction to the nomenclature of organic chemical systems, with particular reference to heterocyclic compounds containing up to three rings. | 2 | Two hours, and it is a naming skill rather than a memory list. Practise recognising the common ring systems by sight; once you can name the ring, the drug classes in the next nine chapters stop looking like unrelated strings of letters. |
| 5 | Drugs acting on the central nervous system — anaesthetics, sedatives and hypnotics, antipsychotics, anticonvulsants and anti-depressants, studied for classification, chemical name, chemical structure of the starred compounds, uses, stability, storage conditions, formulations and popular brand names. | 9 | The largest of the drug chapters, and the one where the official list marks certain compounds with an asterisk — those starred ones are where a structure can be asked. Learn the class first, then one starred representative per class, and treat the rest as recognition-level knowledge. |
| 6 | Drugs acting on the autonomic nervous system — sympathomimetic agents (direct acting, indirect acting and mixed mechanism), adrenergic antagonists (alpha and beta blockers), cholinergic drugs and related agents, cholinesterase inhibitors, and cholinergic blocking agents including the synthetic ones. | 9 | This chapter is a map of four quadrants — stimulate or block, sympathetic or parasympathetic. Draw that grid once, place every named drug into it, and you will never confuse an adrenergic blocker with a cholinergic one in the exam hall. |
| 7 | Drugs acting on the cardiovascular system — anti-arrhythmic drugs, anti-hypertensive agents and antianginal agents, with classification, chemical name, structure of the starred compounds, uses, stability and storage. | 5 | Five hours only, so keep it tight: one drug you can name and spell for each of the three groups, plus the storage note for the nitrate. These are also the medicines a district pharmacist hands over most often, so the knowledge is not exam-only. |
| 8 | Diuretics — classification, chemical names, structure of the starred compounds, uses, stability and storage conditions of the named diuretic agents. | 2 | Two hours and a short named list. Group them by site of action in the nephron — that single organising idea is what the question tests, and it carries straight over into the Pharmacology course later. |
| 9 | Hypoglycemic agents — insulin and its preparations, and the named oral agents, with classification, uses, stability, storage and marketed formulations. | 3 | Insulin is the part worth extra time: the preparation types, their onset and duration idea, and the storage rule. A pharmacist who cannot state the storage rule for insulin is a real-world problem, and the paper knows it. |
| 10 | Analgesic and anti-inflammatory agents — morphine analogues, narcotic antagonists, and the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents (NSAIDs) named in the official list. | 3 | Split the entry in two the way the syllabus does — opioid and non-opioid — and keep one antagonist name ready, because the antagonist is the part candidates forget. The NSAID list overlaps with the Pharmacology course, so revise them together. |
| 11 | Anti-infective agents — antifungal agents, urinary tract anti-infective agents, anti-tubercular agents, antiviral agents, antimalarials and sulfonamides, each with its named list of compounds. | 8 | Six sub-classes and one of the biggest name lists in the course. The anti-tubercular group deserves the most attention because it is what a government pharmacist handles under the national programme, and the same drugs return in Pharmacology and again in Social Pharmacy. |
| 12 | Antibiotics — penicillins, tetracyclines, macrolides, aminoglycoside and miscellaneous agents named in the official list, with classification, uses, stability, storage and brand names. | 8 | Learn the families, not the individual names first. Once penicillins, tetracyclines and macrolides are separate boxes in your head, the named drugs drop into them by their word endings, and the eight hours become manageable. |
| 13 | Anti-neoplastic agents — the named cytotoxic compounds, with classification, chemical name, structure of the starred compounds, uses, stability and storage conditions. | 3 | The shortest of the drug chapters and the most specialised. Know the class each named compound belongs to and, above all, the handling and disposal rule for cytotoxics — that rule is asked again in the Hospital Pharmacy course. |
Pharmacognosy (ER20-13T) — all 12 topic entries ↑
Pharmacognosy is the study of drugs of natural origin, and its shape is unusual: twelve chapters, of which one — the crude drug list — takes thirty of the seventy-five hours. That single entry is the largest anywhere in the D.Pharm syllabus, and it is a memory task, not a reasoning one.
The left column is the chapter number exactly as the official table prints it. The second column is the syllabus entry, with the Council's own technical terms kept as they stand. The hours column is the Council's allocation, and the 12 entries below add up to the 75 hours the course is worth. The last column is our reading of what the entry asks for and how to work it.
| Chapter | What the official syllabus lists | Hours | What it covers and how to prepare |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Definition, history, present status and scope of Pharmacognosy. | 2 | Two hours of straight definition work. Write the definition once in your own words and keep the historical scope short — the marks in this course live further down, in the crude-drug list. |
| 2 | Classification of drugs — alphabetical, taxonomical, morphological, pharmacological, chemical and chemo-taxonomical. | 4 | Six systems, and the question is almost always 'give one advantage and one limitation of'. Learn them as a comparison rather than as six separate definitions, and keep one example drug ready for each. |
| 3 | Quality control of crude drugs — different methods of adulteration of crude drugs, and evaluation of crude drugs. | 6 | Adulteration and evaluation are two halves of one idea: how a drug is faked, and how you catch it. Learn the five evaluation methods by name and pair each with the kind of adulteration it detects. |
| 4 | Brief outline of the occurrence, distribution, isolation, identification tests, therapeutic activity and pharmaceutical applications of alkaloids, terpenoids, glycosides, volatile oils, tannins and resins. | 6 | Six classes of phytoconstituent, and each one has a signature identification test. Learn the test names first — they are what the practical paper asks — then attach one plant and one therapeutic use to each class. |
| 5 | Biological source, chemical constituents and therapeutic efficacy of the listed categories of crude drugs — laxatives, cardiotonics, carminatives and gastro-intestinal regulators, astringents, drugs acting on the nervous system, anti-hypertensives, anti-tussives, anti-rheumatics, anti-tumour drugs, antidiabetics, diuretics, anti-dysenterics, antiseptics and disinfectants, antimalarials, oxytocics, vitamins, enzymes, pharmaceutical aids and a miscellaneous group. | 30 | Thirty hours — the single biggest entry anywhere in the D.Pharm syllabus, and by itself larger than several whole chapters. The official document gives a two-column table of category against named plants; build that same table yourself and revise it daily, because no amount of understanding substitutes for knowing which plant sits in which row. |
| 6 | Plant fibres used as surgical dressings — cotton, silk, wool and regenerated fibres; sutures — surgical catgut and ligatures. | 3 | A small, very concrete entry. Know the source of each fibre, the one property that makes it suitable for dressing, and the difference between a suture and a ligature — that last distinction is a standard one-mark question. |
| 7 | Basic principles of the traditional systems of medicine — Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani and Homeopathy; methods of preparing Ayurvedic formulations such as Arista, Asava, Gutika, Taila, Churna, Lehya and Bhasma. | 8 | Eight hours, and half of them belong to the Ayurvedic preparation names. Learn each preparation by what it physically is — a fermented liquid, a pill, an oil, a powder — because that is the cleanest way to keep seven similar-sounding names apart. |
| 8 | Role of medicinal and aromatic plants in the national economy and their export potential. | 2 | Two hours of context rather than chemistry. A short-answer question at most, so read it once, note two or three export crops, and move on to the bigger entries. |
| 9 | Herbs as health food — brief introduction and therapeutic applications of nutraceuticals, antioxidants, probiotics, prebiotics, dietary fibres, omega-3 fatty acids, spirulina, carotenoids, soya and garlic. | 4 | Ten named items in four hours, so one line each is the right depth: what it is and what it is taken for. Prebiotic versus probiotic is the distinction most often asked, and it also comes up in the Social Pharmacy assignments. |
| 10 | Introduction to herbal formulations. | 4 | Four hours for an entry the official document states in one line, which means the depth is left to the teacher. Cover what a herbal formulation legally is, how it is labelled, and how it differs from an allopathic one — the labelling part links to Pharmacy Law. |
| 11 | Herbal cosmetics — sources, chemical constituents, commercial preparations, and the therapeutic and cosmetic uses of aloe vera gel, almond oil, lavender oil, olive oil, rosemary oil and sandalwood oil. | 4 | Six named products and a clean four-column answer: source, main constituent, cosmetic use, therapeutic use. Write that table once and this entry is finished. |
| 12 | Phytochemical investigation of drugs. | 2 | The closing entry, and it ties the course together: extraction, separation, identification. Two hours, so learn the sequence of steps rather than the detail of any one technique. |
Human Anatomy and Physiology (ER20-14T) — all 16 topic entries ↑
Human Anatomy and Physiology has the most chapters of any Part I course — fifteen numbered chapters producing sixteen hour-bearing rows, because chapter 4 is split into a bones row and a joints row. It is also the course with the closest link to the laboratory work, since the practical course measures blood pressure, blood counts and body temperature on real people.
The left column is the chapter number exactly as the official table prints it. The second column is the syllabus entry, with the Council's own technical terms kept as they stand. The hours column is the Council's allocation, and the 16 entries below add up to the 75 hours the course is worth. The last column is our reading of what the entry asks for and how to work it.
| Chapter | What the official syllabus lists | Hours | What it covers and how to prepare |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Scope of Anatomy and Physiology; definition of the various terminologies. | 2 | The vocabulary chapter. Two hours spent fixing anatomical position, planes and directional terms saves you from misreading every later question in the course. |
| 2 | Structure of the cell — components and their functions. | 2 | One diagram, correctly labelled, answers most of what is asked here. Learn the organelles by function, and keep the mitochondrion and the ribosome ready as the two most-asked names. |
| 3 | Tissues of the human body — epithelial, connective, muscular and nervous tissues, their sub-types and characteristics. | 4 | Four tissue families, each with sub-types. Learn one location and one function per sub-type; the practical course asks you to identify these on prepared slides, so the written and practical work reinforce each other. |
| 4 | Osseous system — structure and functions of the bones of the axial and appendicular skeleton. | 3 | The bone-counting entry. Learn the axial and appendicular split first, then the counts; the practical course studies the human skeleton directly, which is the fastest way to make the names stick. |
| 4 | Classification, types and movements of joints, and disorders of joints. | 3 | Joints are asked as 'name the joint and its movement'. Fix the six movement terms, attach one named joint to each, and keep two joint disorders ready — they return in the Pharmacotherapeutics course as arthritis. |
| 5 | Haemopoietic system — composition and functions of blood, the process of haemopoiesis, characteristics and functions of red cells, white cells and platelets, the mechanism of blood clotting, and the importance of blood groups. | 8 | Eight hours and the highest practical overlap in the course — blood grouping, haemoglobin, ESR, bleeding and clotting time are all done in the laboratory. Learn the clotting cascade as a sequence you can say out loud, and know the normal ranges, because normal values are the easiest marks in the paper. |
| 6 | Lymphatic system — lymph and the lymphatic system, its composition, function and formation; structure and functions of the spleen and lymph node. | 3 | A short entry with one favourite question: how lymph differs from blood plasma. Answer that in a sentence, add the two named organs with one function each, and this is done. |
| 7 | Cardiovascular system — anatomy and physiology of the heart, blood vessels and circulation (pulmonary, coronary and systemic), cardiac cycle and heart sounds, basics of ECG, and blood pressure and its regulation. | 8 | The cardiac cycle and blood pressure regulation are the two entries worth the most here, and blood pressure recording is a practical you will actually be tested on. Learn the three circulations as three separate loops before you touch the cycle. |
| 8 | Respiratory system — anatomy of the respiratory organs and their functions, regulation and mechanism of respiration, and definitions of respiratory volumes and capacities. | 4 | The volumes and capacities are pure definition marks — learn all of them with their approximate values. The peak flow meter used in the practical course measures one of them, which makes the definition concrete. |
| 9 | Digestive system — anatomy and physiology of the gastro-intestinal tract, anatomy and functions of the accessory glands, and the physiology of digestion and absorption. | 8 | Eight hours, and the enzymes are where candidates lose marks. Build one table of enzyme, where it is secreted, what it acts on and what it produces — that single table covers most of what can be asked from this entry. |
| 10 | Skeletal muscles — histology, physiology of muscle contraction, and disorders of skeletal muscles. | 2 | Two hours, and the sliding filament idea is the whole of it. Say the contraction mechanism in four steps; the disorders are worth one line each. |
| 11 | Nervous system — classification of the nervous system, anatomy and physiology of the cerebrum, cerebellum and mid brain, functions of the hypothalamus, medulla oblongata and basal ganglia, spinal cord structure and reflexes, names and functions of the cranial nerves, and the anatomy and physiology of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. | 8 | The twelve cranial nerves are the recall load here and there is no shortcut — learn them by number, name and function. The autonomic split at the end is the same grid you used in Pharmaceutical Chemistry, so the two courses pay each other back. |
| 12 | Sense organs — anatomy and physiology of the eye, ear, skin, tongue and nose. | 6 | Five organs in six hours, so keep each to a labelled diagram plus the pathway of the sensation. The eye and the ear take most of the marks and most of the drawing time. |
| 13 | Urinary system — anatomy and physiology of the urinary system, physiology of urine formation, the renin-angiotensin system, clearance tests and micturition. | 4 | Urine formation in three stages is the answer to most questions here. The renin-angiotensin system is worth extra time because it explains the anti-hypertensive drugs you meet in two other courses. |
| 14 | Endocrine system — hormones and their functions, covering the pituitary gland, adrenal gland, thyroid and parathyroid glands, and the pancreas and gonads. | 6 | One table again: gland, hormone, target, effect, and the disease of excess and deficiency. The thyroid and pancreas rows come back in Pharmacotherapeutics, so write them carefully. |
| 15 | Reproductive system — anatomy of the male and female reproductive systems, physiology of menstruation, spermatogenesis and oogenesis, and pregnancy and parturition. | 4 | The menstrual cycle with its hormone curve is the highest-value item here, and it connects to the family planning and reproductive health work in Social Pharmacy. Learn the cycle by phase and the hormone that drives each one. |
Social Pharmacy (ER20-15T) — all 6 topic entries ↑
Social Pharmacy is new to the D.Pharm curriculum under the Education Regulations 2020, and for a district-cadre government post it is the most directly job-shaped course in the whole syllabus. Only six chapters, but two of them — preventive healthcare at eighteen hours and communicable disease at twenty-eight — take almost two-thirds of the course.
The left column is the chapter number exactly as the official table prints it. The second column is the syllabus entry, with the Council's own technical terms kept as they stand. The hours column is the Council's allocation, and the 6 entries below add up to the 75 hours the course is worth. The last column is our reading of what the entry asks for and how to work it.
| Chapter | What the official syllabus lists | Hours | What it covers and how to prepare |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction to Social Pharmacy — definition and scope, Social Pharmacy as a discipline and its scope in improving public health, the role of pharmacists in public health, the concept of health with the WHO definition, dimensions, determinants and health indicators, the National Health Policy in the Indian perspective, the public and private health system in India and the National Health Mission, and an introduction to the Millennium Development Goals, Sustainable Development Goals and FIP Development Goals. | 9 | This is the chapter that explains why a state recruits pharmacists at all. The official document even splits the nine hours across its sub-topics, so follow that split rather than reading it as one block, and learn the WHO definition of health word for word — it is the single most quoted line in the course. |
| 2 | Preventive healthcare and the role of pharmacists in it — demography and family planning, mother and child health with the importance of breastfeeding and the ill effects of infant milk substitutes and bottle feeding, an overview of vaccines with types of immunity and immunization, the effect of environment on health covering water pollution, safe drinking water, waterborne diseases, air pollution, noise pollution, sewage and solid waste disposal, occupational illnesses and environmental pollution due to pharmaceuticals, and psychosocial pharmacy covering drugs of misuse and abuse and their social impact. | 18 | Eighteen hours, the second largest entry in the whole syllabus, and seven of them go to environment and health alone. For a district-cadre post this is the most job-relevant chapter there is; the immunisation schedule, in particular, is both an exam item and something you will be asked about across a counter. |
| 3 | Nutrition and health — basics of nutrition with macronutrients and micronutrients, the importance of water and fibre in the diet, balanced diet, malnutrition, nutrition deficiency diseases, ill effects of junk foods, calorific and nutritive values of foods and food fortification, an introduction to food safety covering adulteration, artificial ripening, pesticide use and genetically modified foods, and dietary supplements, nutraceuticals and food supplements with their indications, benefits and drug-food interactions. | 10 | Deficiency diseases are the reliable marks: learn each one with its nutrient and its classic sign. Drug-food interactions at the end of the entry are also asked in the Community Pharmacy course, so learn a handful of real examples rather than the general idea. |
| 4 | Introduction to microbiology and common microorganisms; epidemiology — introduction and applications, and terms such as epidemic, pandemic, endemic, mode of transmission, outbreak, quarantine, isolation, incubation period, contact tracing, morbidity and mortality; and the causative agents, epidemiology, clinical presentation and the pharmacist's educative role in preventing respiratory infections, intestinal infections, arthropod-borne infections, surface infections and sexually transmitted diseases including HIV and AIDS. | 28 | Twenty-eight hours — the largest entry in Part I and second only to the crude-drug list in the whole D.Pharm syllabus. The official document allocates hours disease group by disease group, and respiratory and intestinal infections take seven each. Learn every disease as a four-part card: organism, how it spreads, what it looks like, and what the pharmacist tells the public. |
| 5 | Introduction to health systems and all the ongoing National Health programmes in India — their objectives, functioning and outcomes, and the role of pharmacists in them. | 8 | Eight hours on the national programmes, and this is where a government job interview and a written paper ask the same thing. Keep a list of the programmes with the year and the one disease or goal each targets; the tuberculosis programme deserves the most attention. |
| 6 | Pharmacoeconomics — introduction, basic terminologies and the importance of pharmacoeconomics. | 2 | The closing two hours, and a definition-level entry. Know what cost-effectiveness means in a sentence and why a government pharmacy cares about it; that is the depth the hours allow. |
Pharmacology (ER20-21T) — all 13 topic entries ↑
Pharmacology opens Part II and is organised body-system by body-system after a long general chapter. Thirteen chapters, and the syllabus asks every drug group in the same fixed shape: definition, classification, pharmacological actions, dose, indications and contraindications.
The left column is the chapter number exactly as the official table prints it. The second column is the syllabus entry, with the Council's own technical terms kept as they stand. The hours column is the Council's allocation, and the 13 entries below add up to the 75 hours the course is worth. The last column is our reading of what the entry asks for and how to work it.
| Chapter | What the official syllabus lists | Hours | What it covers and how to prepare |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | General Pharmacology — introduction and scope; routes of drug administration with their advantages and disadvantages; drug absorption — definition, types and the factors affecting it; bioavailability and the factors affecting it; drug distribution — definition and the factors affecting it; biotransformation — definition, types of reaction and the factors influencing drug metabolism; excretion — definition and routes; and the general mechanisms of drug action with the factors that modify it. | 10 | Ten hours, and everything after it depends on this chapter. Absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion is the frame the whole course hangs on — learn it as one journey a tablet makes, not as four separate definitions, and the later drug chapters become far shorter. |
| 2 | Drugs acting on the peripheral nervous system — steps in neurohumoral transmission; and the definition, classification, pharmacological actions, dose, indications and contraindications of cholinergic drugs, anti-cholinergic drugs, adrenergic drugs, anti-adrenergic drugs, neuromuscular blocking agents, drugs used in myasthenia gravis, local anaesthetic agents and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. | 11 | The largest single chapter in Pharmacology. Every sub-group is asked in the same five-part shape the syllabus uses — definition, classification, action, dose, contraindication — so answer in that shape and you cannot leave a part out. |
| 3 | Drugs acting on the eye — definition, classification, pharmacological actions, dose, indications and contraindications of miotics, mydriatics and the drugs used in glaucoma. | 2 | Two hours and three groups. The one thing to get right is which group constricts the pupil and which dilates it — candidates reverse miotic and mydriatic under exam pressure more often than any other pair in this course. |
| 4 | Drugs acting on the central nervous system — definition, classification, pharmacological actions, dose, indications and contraindications of general anaesthetics, hypnotics and sedatives, anti-convulsants, anti-anxiety drugs, anti-depressants, antipsychotics, nootropic agents, centrally acting muscle relaxants and opioid analgesics. | 8 | Nine drug groups in eight hours, so depth per group is shallow by design. Keep one representative drug and one contraindication for each group, and revise this alongside the matching chapter in Pharmaceutical Chemistry — the same drugs, seen from the other side. |
| 5 | Drugs acting on the cardiovascular system — definition, classification, pharmacological actions, dose, indications and contraindications of anti-hypertensive drugs, anti-anginal drugs, anti-arrhythmic drugs, drugs used in atherosclerosis and congestive heart failure, and drug therapy for shock. | 6 | Six hours covering the medicines most often dispensed on a government counter. Learn the anti-hypertensive classes by mechanism, because that is what lets you answer a contraindication question you have not seen before. |
| 6 | Drugs acting on blood and blood forming organs — definition, classification, pharmacological actions, dose, indications and contraindications of haematinic agents, anti-coagulants, anti-platelet agents and thrombolytic drugs. | 4 | Four groups in four hours, one hour each. The anti-coagulant versus anti-platelet distinction is the mark, and the haematinics connect straight to the anaemia entry in Pharmacotherapeutics. |
| 7 | Definition, classification, pharmacological actions, dose, indications and contraindications of bronchodilators, expectorants, anti-tussive agents and mucolytic agents. | 2 | The respiratory group, and two hours is enough if you keep the four categories apart by what they physically do to a cough. Inhaler technique is tested in the practical course, so learn the device alongside the drug. |
| 8 | Drugs acting on the gastro-intestinal tract — definition, classification, pharmacological actions, dose, indications and contraindications of anti-ulcer drugs, anti-emetics, laxatives and purgatives, and anti-diarrhoeal drugs. | 5 | These are the medicines people ask a pharmacist for by name, without a prescription. Learn the four groups properly and the over-the-counter chapter in Community Pharmacy becomes half-revised already. |
| 9 | Drugs acting on the kidney — definition, classification, pharmacological actions, dose, indications and contraindications of diuretics and anti-diuretics. | 2 | Two hours, and it repeats the diuretic classification you met in Pharmaceutical Chemistry. Add the electrolyte side-effect of each class here — that is the part the chemistry course does not cover. |
| 10 | Hormones and hormone antagonists — the physiological and pathological role and clinical uses of thyroid hormones, anti-thyroid drugs, parathormone, calcitonin, vitamin D, insulin, oral hypoglycaemic agents, estrogen, progesterone, oxytocin and corticosteroids. | 8 | Eleven named hormones or hormone groups in eight hours. Take them gland by gland the way you learnt the endocrine system in Part I, and give insulin and the corticosteroids the largest share — they are the two with the most clinical use questions. |
| 11 | Autacoids — the physiological role of histamine, 5-HT and prostaglandins; and the classification, clinical uses and adverse effects of antihistamines and 5-HT antagonists. | 3 | Three hours and a chapter that quietly explains a lot of the rest of the paper. Get the first-generation versus second-generation antihistamine difference clear, because sedation is the adverse effect most often asked about. |
| 12 | Chemotherapeutic agents — introduction and the basic principles of chemotherapy of infections, infestations and neoplastic diseases; classification, dose, indications and contraindications of penicillins, cephalosporins, aminoglycosides, fluoroquinolones, macrolides, tetracyclines, sulphonamides, anti-tubercular drugs, anti-fungal drugs, anti-viral drugs, anti-amoebic agents, anthelmintics, anti-malarial agents and anti-neoplastic agents. | 12 | Twelve hours and fourteen named drug classes — the second largest chapter in this course. The anti-tubercular and anti-malarial groups matter most for a state health post, and the same names have already appeared in Pharmaceutical Chemistry, so revise the two lists together rather than twice. |
| 13 | Biologicals — definition, types and indications of biological agents with examples. | 2 | The closing two hours. Definition, three types with an example each, and one indication per type is the depth the syllabus allows, and it links back to the sera and vaccines entry in Pharmaceutics. |
Community Pharmacy and Management (ER20-22T) — all 9 topic entries ↑
Community Pharmacy and Management is the counter-work course. Its official table numbers its chapters 1 to 7 and then jumps to 9 and 10 — there is no chapter 8 in the document, and we have kept the numbering exactly as printed rather than renumbering it to look tidy.
The left column is the chapter number exactly as the official table prints it. The second column is the syllabus entry, with the Council's own technical terms kept as they stand. The hours column is the Council's allocation, and the 9 entries below add up to the 75 hours the course is worth. The last column is our reading of what the entry asks for and how to work it.
| Chapter | What the official syllabus lists | Hours | What it covers and how to prepare |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Community Pharmacy Practice — definition, history and development of community pharmacy in the international and Indian scenarios. | 2 | Two hours of background. Read it once, keep two dates and the Indian development line, and spend the time you save on the counselling and OTC chapters, which carry far more marks. |
| 2 | Professional responsibilities of community pharmacists; introduction to the concept of Good Pharmacy Practice and standard operating procedures. | 3 | Good Pharmacy Practice is a named standard, not a general phrase — learn what it actually requires. Standard operating procedures come back in the Hospital Pharmacy course and in the practical assignments, so it is worth getting right here. |
| 3 | Prescription and prescription handling — definition, parts of a prescription, legality of prescriptions, prescription handling, labelling of dispensed medications including main label, ancillary label and pictograms, brief instructions on medication usage; the dispensing process, Good Dispensing Practices, dispensing errors and the strategies to minimise them. | 7 | This is the core skill of the job and it is examined as such. Learn the parts of a prescription in order and the labelling rules exactly, because the practical-skill questions in the OSSSC paper are drawn from exactly this kind of counter work. |
| 4 | Communication skills — definition and types; interactions with professionals and patients; verbal communication skills one-to-one and over the telephone; written communication skills; body language; and patient interview techniques. | 6 | Six hours on something that looks soft and is not. The patient interview technique in particular is a sequence you can be asked to list, and the practical course assesses it through role play with a structured form. |
| 5 | Patient counselling — definition and benefits; stages of counselling covering introduction, content, process and closing; barriers to effective counselling and strategies to overcome them; counselling points for chronic diseases including hypertension, diabetes, asthma, tuberculosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and AIDS; patient package inserts — definition, importance, benefits and use in India and other countries; and patient information leaflets. | 10 | Ten hours, the largest teaching block short of the management chapter, and the most job-shaped content in the whole syllabus. Learn the stages as a fixed sequence and prepare one counselling script for each of the six named chronic diseases. |
| 6 | Medication adherence — definition, the factors influencing non-adherence, and strategies to overcome non-adherence. | 2 | Short and reliably asked. Learn three causes of non-adherence and three fixes, and connect it to the counselling chapter — adherence is what counselling exists to produce. |
| 7 | Health screening services in community pharmacy — introduction, scope and importance of the various health screening services for routine monitoring of patients and for the early detection and referral of undiagnosed cases. | 5 | Five hours, and the practical course turns each of these into a measurement you perform yourself — blood pressure, blood glucose, peak flow, pulse oximetry and body mass index. Learn the normal range for each; that is the exam-shaped part of it. |
| 9 | Over the counter medications — definition, need and the role of pharmacists in OTC dispensing; OTC medications in India and counselling for OTC products; self-medication and the pharmacist's role in promoting safe practice; and responding to symptoms, minor ailments and advice for self-care in conditions such as pain, cough, cold, diarrhoea, constipation, vomiting, fever, sore throat, skin disorders and oral health problems. | 15 | Fifteen hours, and note the chapter number — the official table skips from 7 straight to 9, with no chapter 8. This is the single most useful chapter for daily counter work: learn a response protocol for each named minor ailment, including when to refer rather than sell. |
| 10 | Community pharmacy management — legal requirements to set up a community pharmacy, site selection, pharmacy design and interiors, vendor selection and ordering, procurement and inventory control methods, financial planning and management, accountancy including day book and cash book, introduction to pharmacy operation software, customer relation management, audits in pharmacies, standard operating procedures for pharmacy management, and an introduction to digital health, mHealth and online pharmacies. | 25 | Twenty-five hours — the largest chapter in Part II and a third of this entire course. It is really a small business-management syllabus attached to a pharmacy degree. Inventory control and the legal set-up requirements are the two blocks that repay study most, and both reappear in Hospital Pharmacy and Pharmacy Law. |
Biochemistry and Clinical Pathology (ER20-23T) — all 13 topic entries ↑
Biochemistry and Clinical Pathology has thirteen chapters, and one of them — metabolism — takes twenty of the seventy-five hours. The syllabus makes one explicit concession there: the pathways are to be studied as cycles, without chemical structures.
The left column is the chapter number exactly as the official table prints it. The second column is the syllabus entry, with the Council's own technical terms kept as they stand. The hours column is the Council's allocation, and the 13 entries below add up to the 75 hours the course is worth. The last column is our reading of what the entry asks for and how to work it.
| Chapter | What the official syllabus lists | Hours | What it covers and how to prepare |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction to biochemistry — the scope of biochemistry in pharmacy, and the cell and its biochemical organization. | 2 | Two hours of orientation. Read it for the map rather than the detail; the marks in this course sit in the metabolism chapter and the organ function tests. |
| 2 | Carbohydrates — definition and classification with examples, chemical properties, structure of glucose, fructose and galactose, structure of maltose, lactose and sucrose, the chemical nature of starch and glycogen, and the qualitative tests and biological role of carbohydrates. | 5 | The qualitative tests are the part the practical examination uses, so learn each test with its reagent and its positive result. Structures are asked at recognition level, not at drawing level, for most of the sugars. |
| 3 | Proteins — definition and classification based on composition and solubility with examples, definition and classification of amino acids by chemical nature and nutritional requirement, the four levels of protein structure, qualitative tests and the biological role of proteins and amino acids, and diseases related to protein malnutrition. | 5 | Two things carry the marks: the four levels of protein structure, in order, and the protein deficiency diseases. The second of those also appears in the Social Pharmacy nutrition chapter, so learn it once for both. |
| 4 | Lipids — definition and classification with examples, structure and properties of triglycerides, classification of fatty acids by chemical nature and nutritional requirement, structure and function of cholesterol, types, composition and function of lipoproteins, and the qualitative tests and functions of lipids. | 5 | Lipoproteins are the entry that pays off twice — once here and again when you meet hyperlipidaemia in Pharmacotherapeutics and the lipid profile test in Hospital Pharmacy. Learn the types with what each one carries and where. |
| 5 | Nucleic acids — definition, purine and pyrimidine bases, components of nucleosides and nucleotides with examples, and the structure of DNA on the Watson and Crick model, RNA and their functions. | 4 | Four hours and mostly structural recall. Separate purine from pyrimidine on day one — that single distinction is behind most of the questions asked from this entry. |
| 6 | Enzymes — definition, properties and the IUB and MB classification, factors affecting enzyme activity, the mechanism of enzyme action and enzyme inhibitors, and the therapeutic and pharmaceutical importance of enzymes. | 5 | Enzyme inhibition is where the pharmacology of half your drugs comes from, so this entry is more useful than it looks. Learn competitive versus non-competitive inhibition with one drug example each. |
| 7 | Vitamins — definition and classification with examples; and the sources, chemical nature, functions, coenzyme form, recommended dietary requirement and deficiency diseases of the fat-soluble and water-soluble vitamins. | 6 | A table entry, and one of the most predictable scoring areas in the whole paper: vitamin, solubility, source, coenzyme form, deficiency disease. Write it once, revise it often. |
| 8 | Metabolism, studied as cycles and pathways without chemical structures — carbohydrate metabolism covering glycolysis, the TCA cycle, glycogen metabolism, regulation of blood glucose and the diseases of abnormal carbohydrate metabolism; lipid metabolism covering lipolysis, beta-oxidation of fatty acid, ketogenesis and ketolysis and the related diseases; amino acid metabolism covering transamination, deamination, the urea cycle, decarboxylation and the related disorders; and biological oxidation covering the electron transport chain and oxidative phosphorylation. | 20 | Twenty hours, by far the largest chapter here, and the official syllabus makes one merciful decision — the pathways are to be studied without chemical structures. Learn each cycle as a named sequence of steps with the disease that appears when it fails, and you have covered what is asked. |
| 9 | Minerals — types, functions, deficiency diseases and recommended dietary requirements. | 5 | Same table method as the vitamins: mineral, function, deficiency sign, requirement. Iron and iodine deserve the most attention because both are tied to national health programmes you study in Social Pharmacy. |
| 10 | Water and electrolytes — distribution and functions of water in the body, water turnover and balance, the electrolyte composition of body fluids, dietary intake and electrolyte balance, and dehydration with its causes and oral rehydration therapy. | 5 | Oral rehydration therapy is the entry with the most public-health weight in this course, and it returns in the diarrhoea section of Community Pharmacy. Know the composition and the reason each ingredient is there. |
| 11 | Introduction to biotechnology. | 1 | One hour — the shortest entry anywhere in this syllabus. Read the definition and two applications; anything more is time taken from the metabolism chapter, which is worth twenty times as much. |
| 12 | Organ function tests — the functions of the kidney and the routinely performed tests to assess them with their clinical significance, the functions of the liver and the tests to assess them with their clinical significance, and lipid profile tests and their clinical significance. | 6 | This is the entry that turns biochemistry into a working skill: reading a lab report. Learn the tests by organ, with the normal range and what a raised value suggests, because Hospital Pharmacy examines the same skill again as report interpretation. |
| 13 | Introduction to the pathology of blood and urine — lymphocytes and platelets and their role in health and disease, erythrocytes and the significance of abnormal cells, and the normal and abnormal constituents of urine and their significance. | 6 | The clinical pathology half of the course title, and it is directly practical: the laboratory work asks you to test urine for normal and abnormal constituents. Learn what each abnormal finding suggests, not just its name. |
Pharmacotherapeutics (ER20-24T) — all 14 topic entries ↑
Pharmacotherapeutics is structured differently from every other course: one short introductory chapter, and then a single chapter 2 broken into thirteen lettered disease groups from (a) to (m), each with its own hour allocation. We have kept those letters, because that is how the official table identifies them.
The left column is the chapter number exactly as the official table prints it. The second column is the syllabus entry, with the Council's own technical terms kept as they stand. The hours column is the Council's allocation, and the 14 entries below add up to the 75 hours the course is worth. The last column is our reading of what the entry asks for and how to work it.
| Chapter | What the official syllabus lists | Hours | What it covers and how to prepare |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pharmacotherapeutics — introduction, scope and objectives; the rational use of medicines, evidence based medicine, the Essential Medicines List and Standard Treatment Guidelines. | 8 | Eight hours on the framework, and it is not filler. The Essential Medicines List and Standard Treatment Guidelines are the documents a government pharmacist actually works to, and both are named in the syllabus for that reason. |
| 2 (a) | Cardiovascular system — definition, etiopathogenesis, clinical manifestations, and non-pharmacological and pharmacological management of hypertension, angina and myocardial infarction, hyperlipidaemia and congestive heart failure. | 8 | Every disease in chapter 2 is asked in the same five-part shape, and this group gets the joint-largest allocation. Answer in the syllabus's own order — definition, cause, signs, non-drug management, drug management — and the non-drug half is the part candidates forget. |
| 2 (b) | Respiratory system — definition, etiopathogenesis, clinical manifestations and the non-pharmacological and pharmacological management of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. | 4 | Two diseases in four hours. The difference between asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — reversible against progressive — is the distinction the whole entry turns on, and inhaler counselling is the practical side of it. |
| 2 (c) | Endocrine system — definition, etiopathogenesis, clinical manifestations and the non-pharmacological and pharmacological management of diabetes and of thyroid disorders, both hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism. | 5 | Diabetes is the disease a district pharmacist counsels on most, so the five hours are well spent. Know the drug classes, the lifestyle advice, and the warning signs of low blood sugar you would tell a patient about. |
| 2 (d) | Central nervous system — definition, etiopathogenesis, clinical manifestations and the non-pharmacological and pharmacological management of epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, stroke and migraine. | 8 | Five conditions in eight hours, tied for the largest block in this chapter. Epilepsy and stroke carry the most counselling weight; for each condition keep one first-line drug and one thing you would warn the patient about. |
| 2 (e) | Gastro-intestinal disorders — definition, etiopathogenesis, clinical manifestations and the non-pharmacological and pharmacological management of gastro-oesophageal reflux disease, peptic ulcer disease, alcoholic liver disease and inflammatory bowel disease covering Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. | 8 | Four conditions and eight hours. Peptic ulcer disease is the one to know cold — cause, eradication therapy and the patient advice — because it is also the commonest counter question in this group. |
| 2 (f) | Haematological disorders — definition, etiopathogenesis, clinical manifestations and the non-pharmacological and pharmacological management of iron deficiency anaemia and megaloblastic anaemia. | 4 | Two anaemias, and the whole entry rests on telling them apart: which nutrient is missing, what the blood picture looks like, and what you supplement. Both connect to the nutrition chapter in Social Pharmacy. |
| 2 (g) | Infectious diseases — definition, etiopathogenesis, clinical manifestations and the non-pharmacological and pharmacological management of tuberculosis, pneumonia, urinary tract infections, hepatitis, gonorrhoea and syphilis, malaria, HIV with opportunistic infections, and viral infections including SARS-CoV-2. | 12 | Twelve hours — the largest single entry in this course, and eight named disease groups inside it. Tuberculosis, malaria and HIV are the three a government pharmacist handles under national programmes, so give them the most time and learn the treatment regimens as named schedules. |
| 2 (h) | Musculoskeletal disorders — definition, etiopathogenesis, clinical manifestations and the non-pharmacological and pharmacological management of rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. | 3 | Three hours and one distinction to get right: rheumatoid arthritis is inflammatory and systemic, osteoarthritis is degenerative and local. Every question in this entry starts from that difference. |
| 2 (i) | Dermatology — definition, etiopathogenesis, clinical manifestations and the non-pharmacological and pharmacological management of psoriasis, scabies and eczema. | 3 | Three skin conditions, and scabies is the one with a public-health angle — treatment of the whole household, and hygiene advice. Keep one topical treatment ready for each condition. |
| 2 (j) | Psychiatric disorders — definition, etiopathogenesis, clinical manifestations and the non-pharmacological and pharmacological management of depression, anxiety and psychosis. | 4 | Four hours on three conditions where counselling matters as much as the prescription. Adherence and stigma are the practical themes; the drug classes you already met in Pharmacology. |
| 2 (k) | Ophthalmology — definition, etiopathogenesis, clinical manifestations and the non-pharmacological and pharmacological management of conjunctivitis, both bacterial and viral, and glaucoma. | 2 | Two hours. Bacterial against viral conjunctivitis is the distinction, and eye-drop instillation technique is the practical skill attached to it — which the OSSSC paper can test in its practical-skill section. |
| 2 (l) | Anti-microbial resistance. | 2 | Two hours on an entry the syllabus states in three words, which means the framing is yours: why resistance develops, what dispensing behaviour drives it, and what a pharmacist does about it at the counter. |
| 2 (m) | Women's health — definition, etiopathogenesis, clinical manifestations and the non-pharmacological and pharmacological management of polycystic ovary syndrome, dysmenorrhoea and premenstrual syndrome. | 4 | The closing entry of the course, and one where non-pharmacological management carries real weight. Connect it to the reproductive physiology from Part I and to the women's health assignment in Social Pharmacy. |
Hospital and Clinical Pharmacy (ER20-25T) — all 12 topic entries ↑
Hospital and Clinical Pharmacy describes the job a selected candidate is most likely to be posted into. Its official table numbers its rows 1, 2, then 4 onwards — there is no chapter 3, and we verified that on the page image rather than assuming an extraction error.
The left column is the chapter number exactly as the official table prints it. The second column is the syllabus entry, with the Council's own technical terms kept as they stand. The hours column is the Council's allocation, and the 12 entries below add up to the 75 hours the course is worth. The last column is our reading of what the entry asks for and how to work it.
| Chapter | What the official syllabus lists | Hours | What it covers and how to prepare |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hospital Pharmacy — definition, scope and the national and international scenario; organisational structure; professional responsibilities, qualification and experience requirements, job specifications, workload requirements and inter-professional relationships; Good Pharmacy Practice in hospital; hospital pharmacy standards including the FIP Basel Statements and AHSP; and an introduction to NAQS guidelines, NABH accreditation and the role of pharmacists in them. | 6 | The opening chapter, and the one that describes the job an OSSSC-selected pharmacist is actually being hired into. The named standards and accreditations are recall items — learn what each abbreviation stands for and what it governs. |
| 2 | Different committees in the hospital — the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee with its objectives, composition and functions; the hospital formulary with its definition and the procedure for its development and use; and the Infection Control Committee with the pharmacist's role in preventing antimicrobial resistance. | 4 | Three committees, and the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee is the one asked most often — objectives, who sits on it, what it decides. Note that in the official table this row runs on past a page break and the next numbered entry is 4; there is no chapter 3. |
| 4 | Supply chain and inventory control — preparation of drug lists covering high risk drugs, emergency drugs, Schedule H1 drugs, NDPS drugs and reserved antibiotics; procedures of drug purchase including drug selection, short term and long term purchase, the tender and e-tender process and quotations; inventory control techniques including economic order quantity, reorder quantity level and inventory turnover; inventory management of the central drug store covering storage conditions, methods of storage, distribution, maintaining the cold chain and cold-storage devices; FEFO and FIFO methods; expiry drug removal, handling and disposal including narcotics and cytotoxic drugs; and purchase and inventory documentation. | 14 | Fourteen hours, the largest chapter in this course. FEFO against FIFO, the cold chain, and the disposal rules for narcotics and cytotoxics are the three things most likely to be asked, and all three are also real duties of a government hospital pharmacist. |
| 5 | Drug distribution — definition, advantages and disadvantages of the individual prescription order method, floor stock method, unit dose drug distribution method and drug basket method for in-patients and out-patients; distribution of drugs to intensive care, neonatal intensive care and emergency wards; automated drug dispensing systems and devices; and the distribution and storage of narcotic and psychotropic substances. | 7 | Four named distribution methods, each with advantages and disadvantages — that is a table, and the examiner asks it as one. The unit dose method is the one you should be able to argue for in a sentence. |
| 6 | Compounding in hospitals — bulk compounding, intravenous admixture services and incompatibilities, and total parenteral nutrition. | 4 | Four hours on hospital-scale preparation. Incompatibility is the marks-carrying idea — know the types and one example of each, because this is also where a real dispensing error can harm a patient. |
| 7 | Radiopharmaceuticals — storage, dispensing and disposal of radiopharmaceuticals. | 2 | Two hours and three verbs: store, dispense, dispose. Learn the safety precaution attached to each; the entry is short because the depth expected is exactly that. |
| 8 | Application of computers in hospital pharmacy practice, electronic health records, and the software used in hospital pharmacy. | 2 | Two hours, and increasingly the reality of the job. Know what an electronic health record contains and one advantage it gives a pharmacist over paper. |
| 9 | Clinical pharmacy — definition, scope and development in India and other countries; technical definitions and common terminology used in clinical settings such as paediatrics, geriatrics, antenatal care and postnatal care; the daily activities of clinical pharmacists covering ward round participation, treatment chart review, adverse drug reaction monitoring, drug and poison information, medication history, patient counselling and interprofessional collaboration; pharmaceutical care with the classification of drug related problems and the principles and procedure of providing it; and medication therapy management and home medication review. | 12 | Twelve hours, the second largest chapter here, and it defines the clinical half of the job. Learn the daily activity list as a list — the syllabus itself gives it as one, and it is the shape a long-answer question will take. |
| 10 | Clinical laboratory tests used in the evaluation of disease states, with the significance and interpretation of test results — haematological tests, liver function tests, renal function tests and thyroid function tests, tests associated with cardiac disorders, fluid and electrolyte balance, and pulmonary function tests. | 10 | Ten hours of report reading, and it is the practical continuation of the organ function tests you met in Biochemistry. Learn the normal ranges; interpretation questions are unanswerable without them. |
| 11 | Poisoning — types of poisoning, clinical manifestations and antidotes; and drug and poison information centres and their services, covering definition, requirements, information resources with examples, and their advantages and disadvantages. | 6 | The antidote list is the recall item and it is worth writing out: poison, antidote, one line on the mechanism. Emergency treatment for snake bite, dog bite and insecticide poisoning is practised in the Social Pharmacy laboratory too. |
| 12 | Pharmacovigilance — definition, aim and scope, and an overview of pharmacovigilance. | 2 | Two hours, but note that the practical course makes you fill an adverse drug reaction reporting form and perform a causality assessment. Learn the reporting pathway, not just the definition. |
| 13 | Medication errors — definition, types, consequences and the strategies to minimise them, look-alike sound-alike drugs and Tallman lettering as per ISMP; and drug interactions — definition, types and the clinical significance of drug interactions. | 6 | The closing chapter, and arguably the most important one for patient safety. Look-alike sound-alike drug pairs and Tallman lettering are concrete, examinable, and something you will use on a real dispensing shelf. |
Pharmacy Law and Ethics (ER20-26T) — all 21 topic entries ↑
Pharmacy Law and Ethics has twenty-one chapters, more than any other course, and one of them — the Drugs and Cosmetics Act with its Rules — takes twenty-three of the seventy-five hours by itself. For a government pharmacist this is not academic: it is the law you work inside every day.
The left column is the chapter number exactly as the official table prints it. The second column is the syllabus entry, with the Council's own technical terms kept as they stand. The hours column is the Council's allocation, and the 21 entries below add up to the 75 hours the course is worth. The last column is our reading of what the entry asks for and how to work it.
| Chapter | What the official syllabus lists | Hours | What it covers and how to prepare |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | General principles of law, the history and the various Acts related to drugs and the pharmacy profession. | 2 | Two hours of framing. Learn the list of Acts and their years first — that list is the skeleton the next twenty entries hang on. |
| 2 | Pharmacy Act 1948 and Rules — objectives, definitions, the Pharmacy Council of India with its constitution and functions, the Education Regulations, State and Joint State Pharmacy Councils, registration of pharmacists, and offences and penalties; and the Pharmacy Practice Regulations 2015. | 5 | This is the Act you personally register under, and the OSSSC advertisement requires that registration before you apply. Learn the registration provisions properly — they are your own professional standing, not an abstraction. |
| 3 | Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940 and Rules 1945 with the new amendments — objectives, definitions, legal definitions of the schedules; import of drugs including classes prohibited from import and import under licence or permit; manufacture of drugs including prohibition of manufacture and sale of certain drugs, conditions for grant of licence, manufacture for test, examination and analysis, manufacture of a new drug, loan licence and repacking licence; study of Schedules C and C1, G, H, H1, K, P, M, N and X; sale of drugs covering wholesale, retail and restricted licence and the records to be kept in a pharmacy; drugs prohibited for manufacture and sale in India; and the administration of the Act through the Drugs Technical Advisory Board, Central Drugs Laboratory, Drugs Consultative Committee, government analysts, licensing authorities, controlling authorities and drug inspectors. | 23 | Twenty-three hours — the largest chapter in this course and one of the largest in the whole D.Pharm syllabus, and rightly so: this Act is the law a pharmacist breaks or keeps every working day. The schedules are the recall core; learn each one by what it controls and what record it demands. |
| 4 | Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act 1985 and Rules — objectives, definitions, authorities and officers, prohibition, control and regulation, and offences and penalties. | 2 | Two hours on the strictest law you will work under. Learn the record-keeping duty and the penalty scale, because the consequences of getting this wrong are criminal rather than administrative. |
| 5 | Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act 1954 — objectives, definitions, prohibition of certain advertisements, classes of exempted advertisements, and offences and penalties. | 2 | A short Act with a clear question shape: which advertisements are banned and which are exempt. Two lists, learn both. |
| 6 | Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 — objectives, definitions, a brief overview of CPCSEA, the Institutional Animal Ethics Committee, breeding and stocking of animals, performance of experiments, transfer and acquisition of animals for experiment, records, the power to suspend or revoke registration, and offences and penalties. | 2 | Two hours, and it explains why the Pharmacology practical course forbids using animals and uses simulation software instead. Learn CPCSEA and the ethics committee by what they authorise. |
| 7 | Poisons Act 1919 — introduction, objective, definition, possession, possession for sale and sale of any poison, and import of poisons. | 2 | A short and old Act. Possession, sale and import are the three heads; one line on each is the depth the two hours allow. |
| 8 | The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India Act and Rules — a brief overview and the aspects related to the manufacture, storage, sale and labelling of food supplements. | 2 | Two hours, and the relevant slice is narrow by design — food supplements only. Connect it to the nutraceuticals entry in Pharmacognosy and Social Pharmacy. |
| 9 | National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority and the Drugs Price Control Order 2013 — objectives, definitions, sale prices of bulk drugs, retail price of formulations, retail price and ceiling price of scheduled formulations, the Pharmaceutical Policy 2002, and the National List of Essential Medicines. | 5 | Five hours on pricing, and it matters at a counter: a pharmacist who cannot tell a scheduled formulation from a non-scheduled one cannot tell whether a price is legal. Learn the ceiling price idea and the National List of Essential Medicines together. |
| 10 | Code of Pharmaceutical Ethics — definition, ethical principles, ethical problem solving, registration, the code of ethics for a pharmacist in relation to his job, trade, the medical profession and his own profession, and the pharmacist's oath. | 5 | Five hours on ethics, and the pharmacist's oath is quotable material — the kind of thing an interview board asks about as readily as a paper does. Learn the four relations the code is organised around. |
| 11 | Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act and Rules — basic understanding, salient features and the amendments. | 2 | Two hours. Salient features and the amendment are what is asked; keep the permitted grounds and the authorised provider in mind rather than the full text. |
| 12 | The role of the government pharmaceutical regulatory bodies — the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization and the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission. | 1 | One hour and two named bodies. Learn what each one does in a single line each; the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission links straight back to the pharmacopoeia entry in Pharmaceutics. |
| 13 | Good regulatory practices — documentation, licences, renewals and e-governance in community pharmacy, hospital pharmacy, pharmaceutical manufacturing, wholesale business, inspections, and the import and export of drugs and medical devices. | 3 | Three hours on paperwork, which is what regulatory compliance actually is. Learn which licence belongs to which setting and how long it runs before renewal. |
| 14 | Introduction to the BCS system of classification, basic concepts of clinical trials, ANDA and NDA, new drug development, the New Drugs and Clinical Trials Rules 2019, brand versus generic and the trade name concept, an introduction to patent law and intellectual property rights, and emergency use authorization. | 7 | Seven hours and the most modern entry in the course. Brand against generic is the part a patient will actually ask you about; the clinical trial phases and the 2019 Rules are the part the paper will. |
| 15 | Blood bank — basic requirements and functions. | 2 | Two hours on a facility a district hospital pharmacist works next to. Requirements and functions is the whole entry; connect it to the blood groups you learnt in Human Anatomy and Physiology. |
| 16 | Clinical Establishment Act and Rules — the aspects related to pharmacy. | 2 | Two hours, and the syllabus deliberately narrows it to the pharmacy-related provisions. Learn registration of an establishment and the standards it must meet. |
| 17 | Biomedical Waste Management Rules 2016 — basic aspects and the aspects related to pharmaceutical manufacture, and the disposal of pharmaceutical and medical waste at homes, pharmacies and hospitals. | 2 | The colour-coded bin categories are the examinable core, and they are also a daily duty in any hospital pharmacy. Learn which waste goes in which colour. |
| 18 | Bioethics — basic concepts, history and principles, and a brief overview of the ICMR National Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical and Health Research involving human participants. | 2 | Two hours, and the four principles of bioethics are the answer to most of what is asked. Learn them by name and give one pharmacy example of each. |
| 19 | Introduction to the Consumer Protection Act. | 1 | One hour. Know that a patient buying a medicine is a consumer, what deficiency in service means, and where a complaint goes — that is the whole hour. |
| 20 | Introduction to the Disaster Management Act. | 1 | One hour, and it pairs with the pharmacist's role in disaster management practised in the Social Pharmacy laboratory. Definition, authorities, and the pharmacist's place in the response. |
| 21 | Medical devices — categorisation and the basic aspects related to their manufacture and sale. | 2 | The final entry of the final course. Categorisation is the examinable part, and the practical course has you handle the devices themselves — bandages, catheters, syringes and orthopaedic aids. |
The ten practical courses — where the twenty-five practical-skill marks come from ↑
OSSSC's paper gives a quarter of its marks to questions based on practical skill and says nothing more about them. The only defensible reading is that they come from the practical half of the same D.Pharm syllabus, which is a formally defined set of ten courses with their own hours.
The table below lists all ten with the work each one actually involves. We have condensed each course's experiment list rather than reproducing it item by item — the Council's full list of experiments, assignments and field visits runs to several pages and is in the linked PDF.
If you are short of time, the three courses to work on are Community Pharmacy and Management practical, Hospital and Clinical Pharmacy practical, and Pharmaceutics practical. Between them they cover dispensing, labelling, counselling, health screening, device handling and report reading — the things a Pharmacist does at a counter, and the things a practical-skill question can most easily be written about.
| Course Code | Practical course | Hours | What the course actually involves |
|---|---|---|---|
| ER20-11P | Pharmaceutics – Practical | 75 | Using pharmacopoeias and formularies to retrieve formulas; formulating and dispensing liquid orals, emulsions, suspensions, ointments, creams, gels, liniments, dry powders, sterile injections, hard gelatine capsules and tablets to monograph standards with correct packaging and labelling; at least five cosmetic preparations; tablet manufacturing stages; usage and storage of special dosage forms including inhalers, spacers and insulin pens; and quality control tests on common dosage forms. |
| ER20-12P | Pharmaceutical Chemistry – Practical | 75 | Limit tests for chlorides, sulphate, iron and heavy metals; identification tests for anions and cations as per the Indian Pharmacopoeia; preparation and standardisation of standard solutions; assays by redox, complexometric, Volhard, iodometric and alkalimetric methods; melting and boiling point determination; preparation of organic compounds; purity testing of named pharmaceuticals; and systematic qualitative analysis. |
| ER20-13P | Pharmacognosy – Practical | 75 | Morphological identification of sixteen named crude drugs; transverse-section anatomical study of eleven named drugs; and physical and chemical evaluation tests on five drugs chosen from a named list, plus a field visit to a medicinal garden and to pharmacies of the traditional systems of medicine. |
| ER20-14P | Human Anatomy & Physiology – Practical | 75 | Use of the compound microscope; blood collection technique; microscopic identification of tissues on prepared slides; study of the human skeleton; determination of blood group, ESR, haemoglobin, bleeding and clotting time, white cell count, red cell count and differential count; recording blood pressure in various postures and after exertion; body temperature, pulse and respiratory rate; pulse oximetry; peak flow measurement; height, weight and body mass index; and study of the organ systems using charts, models and specimens. |
| ER20-15P | Social Pharmacy – Practical | 75 | The national immunization schedule and adult vaccine schedule; reproductive and child health; family planning devices; microscopy of microbes; oral and personal hygiene including hand-washing and cough etiquette; masks and personal protective equipment; menstrual hygiene; first aid and basic life support including cardiopulmonary resuscitation and defibrillation; emergency treatment for snake bite, dog bite, insecticide poisoning, fractures, burns and epilepsy; the pharmacist in disaster management; disinfectants and repellents; health communication material in regional languages; water purification and testing; and nutrition counselling. |
| ER20-21P | Pharmacology – Practical | 50 | Introduction to experimental pharmacology, laboratory animals, instruments, routes of administration in animals and types of pre-clinical experiment; then a set of named experiments on local anaesthetic, mydriatic and miotic effects, analgesia, anticonvulsant and muscle relaxant screening, central stimulants and depressants, anxiolytic activity, isolated heart and pyrogen testing. The syllabus states expressly that animals shall not be used and that these are to be done with simulation software. |
| ER20-22P | Community Pharmacy & Management – Practical | 75 | Carried out in a model community pharmacy with simulated scenarios and role play, assessed on a structured form: handling and reviewing prescriptions for legal compliance, identifying drug-drug interactions, preparing dispensing and auxiliary labels, health screening services including blood pressure, capillary blood glucose, peak flow, pulse oximetry and body mass index, counselling simulated patients on named chronic diseases and minor ailments, and correct handling of dummy dosage forms and devices. |
| ER20-23P | Biochemistry & Clinical Pathology – Practical | 50 | Qualitative analysis of carbohydrates, proteins and amino acids, and lipids; qualitative analysis of urine for normal and abnormal constituents; determination of urine constituents including glucose, creatinine and chlorides; determination of blood and serum constituents including glucose, cholesterol, calcium, urea and the transaminases on simulated samples; and study of starch hydrolysis by acid and by salivary amylase. |
| ER20-24P | Pharmacotherapeutics – Practical | 25 | Preparation and discussion of SOAP notes for at least six clinical cases drawn from a list of fifteen named conditions; patient counselling exercises through role play on real or hypothetical cases, minimum five; and simulated cases for dose calculation in paediatric and geriatric patients, minimum four. |
| ER20-25P | Hospital & Clinical Pharmacy – Practical | 25 | Systematic approach to drug information queries; interpretation of laboratory reports to optimise therapy; filling the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission's adverse drug reaction reporting form and performing causality assessment; identification and use of orthopaedic and surgical aids, bandages, needles, syringes, catheters and related items; drug interaction case studies; wound dressing; vaccination and injection technique on mannequins; and use of hospital pharmacy software and digital health tools. |
Arithmetic and English at HSC standard — fifteen marks, and no official topic list ↑
This is the part of the paper where we will not manufacture a syllabus. OSSSC writes exactly two things — Arithmetic (HSC Standard) and English (HSC Standard) — and publishes no topic list, no unit breakdown and no sample paper for either. Any page that gives you a confident chapter list for these fifteen marks has invented it.
One thing the document does let you settle is what HSC means here. Elsewhere in the same advertisement, HSC is the certificate issued by the Board of Secondary Education, Odisha — the Class 10 board, not the +2 Council, which the same page names separately as the Council of Higher Secondary Education. So HSC Standard reads as Class 10 level. That is our reading of the document's own usage, not a separate ruling by the Commission.
The practical advice, then, is arithmetic and English at school-leaving level, done fast and accurately, with the negative marking in mind. Fifteen marks is enough to decide a place in a merit list of a thousand vacancies, and it is the only part of the paper where a non-pharmacy candidate has no advantage over you.
| What OSSSC states | What it does not state | What we can safely say |
|---|---|---|
| Arithmetic (HSC Standard), 10 questions, 10 marks. | No chapter list, no weighting within arithmetic, no calculator rule. | School-level arithmetic. Speed and accuracy matter more than depth, because 10 questions in a 120-minute paper is a small time budget well spent. |
| English (HSC Standard), 5 questions, 5 marks. | No grammar syllabus, no comprehension format, no vocabulary list. | School-level English. Five marks, and with 0.25 deducted per wrong answer a wild guess is close to a wasted question. |
| The meaning of HSC is not defined in section 10. | No definition of HSC Standard is given anywhere in the document. | The advertisement uses HSC elsewhere for the Board of Secondary Education, Odisha certificate, so Class 10 level is the honest reading (our inference, clearly labelled). |
What these two documents do not state — and we will not invent ↑
Everything above comes from two documents and nothing else: OSSSC's own advertisement, and the Pharmacy Council of India syllabus that advertisement points at. Both are linked at the end of this section. Where those documents are silent, this page is silent too, and the list below is what they are silent about.
A syllabus page is only worth reading if you can trust the parts it does not fill in. These are the gaps.
- A topic-level OSSSC syllabus. There is none. Section 10(ii) of the advertisement is one sentence long and delegates the whole syllabus to the Diploma in Pharmacy. Any OSSSC Pharmacist topic list you find elsewhere is somebody's reconstruction.
- The number of questions from each D.Pharm subject. Only the block totals are given — 60 for the diploma subjects, 25 for practical skill. There is no subject-wise or chapter-wise question count, and the hour allocations we have printed are teaching hours in the PCI syllabus, not question weights in the OSSSC paper.
- Any topic list for Arithmetic or English. The advertisement says HSC Standard and stops.
- The actual date of the written test. The advertisement says only that it is likely to be held in the month of March 2024, that it will be held in all districts, and that the date, time and venue will be intimated through admission letters downloaded from the Commission's website. If you need a current date or a newer recruitment cycle, only osssc.gov.in can tell you.
- The mode of the test. The advertisement allows either an OMR system or a computer based recruitment test and states that the exact mode will be notified later.
- Any cut-off mark. The minimum qualifying percentages are stated — 30 and 35 per cent — but the cut-off that actually decides selection depends on vacancies and candidate performance and is published only after the exam.
- Any book list. Both documents prescribe a syllabus, not a reading list. The PCI syllabus does carry recommended books for each course, but they are recommendations to teachers of the diploma, not a set text for this recruitment.
- Whether the syllabus applies to candidates who studied under the earlier regulations, which the Council itself calls ER-91. OSSSC says only Diploma in Pharmacy. The syllabus we have carried is the current one, framed under the Education Regulations 2020; a candidate who studied under ER-91 should expect substantial overlap but should verify against their own course of study.
- Official documents: the advertisement at https://osssc.gov.in/Docs/Adv-906.pdf and the Pharmacy Council of India D.Pharm syllabus at https://www.pci.nic.in/pdf/14-55_ER_20%20_syllabus_23092021.pdf. Both open directly. Note that the OSSSC link must be used without a www prefix — the www form fails certificate verification.
Important Links
FAQ — Your Questions, Answered
Where do I check the OSSSC syllabus?
On osssc.gov.in — the direct link is in the Important Links section of this page. Checking an admit card, result, answer key or syllabus is always free.
Is this the official syllabus?
This page is compiled from OSSSC's official release, but the final word is the official PDF on osssc.gov.in — build your preparation on that document.
How reliable is this information?
We compile this from the official update and link the official source (osssc.gov.in), but always confirm the final details there before you act — dates and details can change.
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