Evolving Standards: An Examination of NAPLEX Blueprint Changes and Implications for the Academy

To examine changes in the North American Pharmacist Licensure Examination (NAPLEX) blueprint from 2007 to 2025 and identify trends in the blueprint competencies and their alignment with curricular standards.

Members of the research team created a crosswalk using the 2025 NAPLEX blueprint as the reference year, to which they mapped the 2007, 2016, and 2021 blueprints. The crosswalk was distributed to several other assessment and curriculum colleagues at various institutions, public and private, for iterative review and revision until consensus was reached. The same process was used to map the 2025 blueprint to Curriculum Outcomes and Entrustable Professional Activities 2023.

New NAPLEX subdomains in 2025 include immunization, ethics, and mentorship/preceptorship. Notable differences in blueprints include structural changes in content moving from separately identifiable areas (ie, math and compounding) and into a collective domain with other content and reducing formulation-related content while increasing clinical content. The latter aligns with a substantial amount of content mapping to the "provider" and "problem-solver" curricular outcomes and the clinical sciences, particularly, medication use processes, area of Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education Standards 2025 Appendix 1.

The 2025 NAPLEX blueprint resembles a shift toward clinical content in comparison to previous blueprints. Curricular outcomes related to solving problems; providing whole person care; and stewardship of medication systems for prescribing, order processing, dispensing, administration, and effects monitoring align with the new NAPLEX blueprint.