PTCB Drug Class Guides

These are exam study guides for the drug classes tested in the PTCB Medications domain, the largest section of the PTCE. They are written for pharmacy technician students preparing for the exam, not as consumer drug information. Each guide teaches a class the way the test asks about it: the suffix family (the shared stem, such as -statin, -pril, or -sartan, that lets you name the class on sight), the drugs and their brand-to-generic pairs, the mechanism of action, and the side effects and interactions you are expected to know, with a clear line on what gets tested versus what does not.

Work through a class to build the background the exam assumes, then check your recall with the cited practice questions at the end of each guide. Reading a guide once is not recall practice, so drill the same classes as Drug Class Flashcards until you can produce the class from the drug name without prompting. Once you can name a class from its stem, test that skill on the drug class identification practice test. Pick a class below to start.