Has anyone taken their exam recently?

Do any of you have some good pointers to study for their pharmacology exam?

Do you remember what types of questions were on it?

Is there anything that you would have done differently to study for it when looking back?

Thanks for any and all of your help!

212

P.S. Feel free to send me a private message as well..

Hi. Where you able to find anything out? I am in the same situation. I was offered a job at CHONY but I really dont know what meds to study. I have no problem with dosage calculations but its the other questions that i am worried about. Please let me know if you have any pointers.

thanks

Haven't heard anything from anyone as of yet...

Check your PM's

hey,

sorry i cant reply to my pm's because of my membership. I got a job offer friday and scheduled my test for wed. people are saying they bought books for the test but i dont know if that will be helpful since the test is 3 days away. I just wish they gave a little direction.

Hey there everyone,

Sorry - I also can't reply to private messages because of my membership level. I took the exam for NY Pres Cornell in Oct. It was VERY difficult! There were ALL kinds of questions on it, but fewer dosage calc questions than I was expecting. There were questions on specific meds, classes of drugs, pharmacodynamics, pharmacotherapeutics, etc. I bought the book they recommended, but - I had a couple weeks to study. In fact, I interviewed for a position starting a month earlier but my nurse recruiter pushed it back a month, one reason being that I'd have weeks, rather than days to study. If you only have a few days to study, I'd suggest getting one of those flip-book thingies they sell at medical bookstores and Barnes & Noblr, a Pharmacology reference one that sums a lot of material up well. I used one of those in conjunction with the book they recommended.

I don't want to scare you, just want to let you know not to blow off studying for the exam. I graduated from Johns Hopkins last May and had an A- in Pharmacology. I was a little rusty on the subject since I'd been out of school for months and wasn't working at the time. I really didn't start studying until the week before, and then I crammed. So I wish I'd spread it out more, and then stressed out less.

Halfway through the exam, I realized I was taking too long on each question, and was maybe going to run out of time. So I panicked and got flustered and felt like I was blindly guessing on half of the questions. It got to the point that I was just racing through the remaining questions wanting it to be over, and thinking about how much more I'd study for my second and last attempt at the exam. When I finished the exam I was POSITIVE I had failed - even moreso than the NCLEX, which turned off after 75 questions, but I had passed both :)

Maybe you'll find the exam not so difficult! I ended up getting something like an 86 on it, but I don't know how!

I love working at NYP-Cornell!

BEST OF LUCK to those of you about to take the exam, let us know how it goes!

OR,

What book did they recommend for study?

Also, all they did was recommend a book for study? Did they not even provide you with an outline or study sheet to breakdown the meds?

While we all know that the calculations portions of the exam is a breeze, I find it very challenging to walk into an exam with no direction at all.

Was the book they suggested truly helpful?

212

Also, OR if you have AIM, feel free to send me a message at: NYnursing

I'm online.

Thank you for your reply. I dont think i am going to buy the book since I have only 2 days to study. Worst part is that the nurse recruiter didnt even recommend I buy a book and simply gave me a few websites for practice questions (which are all dosage related). I just took the NCLEX a few days ago, so i am hoping the meds I studied are still fresh in my mind. I am also going through the medication chapters in the Saunders NCLEX book for a review. I hope this is enough.

Did they give you both generic and brand name of each drug?

Did you feel like the meds were common drugs used in adult medicine such as hyptension meds, duiretics, chemo, GI problems, and so forth or very random unheard of meds?

thanks for all your help and advice. I really appreciate it since I feel like I have received no guidance from the HR department and was given 5 days to prepare.

Thank you for your reply. I dont think i am going to buy the book since I have only 2 days to study. Worst part is that the nurse recruiter didnt even recommend I buy a book and simply gave me a few websites for practice questions (which are all dosage related). I just took the NCLEX a few days ago, so i am hoping the meds I studied are still fresh in my mind. I am also going through the medication chapters in the Saunders NCLEX book for a review. I hope this is enough.

Did they give you both generic and brand name of each drug?

Did you feel like the meds were common drugs used in adult medicine such as hyptension meds, duiretics, chemo, GI problems, and so forth or very random unheard of meds?

thanks for all your help and advice. I really appreciate it since I feel like I have received no guidance from the HR department and was given 5 days to prepare.

Problem is, I've heard from 3 reliable sources that the Pharm exam they give at Columbia Pres (Uptown) is completely different from the one they give at Cornell Pres (Downtown). I mean, we are talking polar opposites here...

Still, I'd like to know what book they recommended for study, because if in any way the book has proved to be effective, than I'd like to buy it for study, regardless of how long it is..

Yels, you might be surprised by the exam you end up taking, that one I heard is not that bad..

212

212 thats good to hear. I really hope that is the case. I am just frustrated because without direction, I cant just sit here and learn every medication and its side effects/administration protocol. It gives me a little comfort knowing I get one chance to retake it, but I would rather not fail this. Goodluck to you! I will let you know if I find out anything else.

Yel

OK my recruiter gave me a 2-page thing with website links and a few practice questions (with no answers to know if I answered them correctly). It didn't help much. I think one of the links was to the study guide I bought, I think that's how I ended up buying the book. It's called "Pharmacology" Prentice Hall Nursing Reviews & Rationales. ISBN # 013030462X. I bought it for $25.95 at Barnes & Noble. It has a CD ROM in it which I used because I thought it would be good practice to do it on a computer since the exam is computerized. I started to study the book, but there's SO much in it, so I realized it would be better to just start plowing through practice questions.

I'll sell you my book for $10 : )

I think it provided generic and brand name meds...? There were a few meds on there that I have NEVER heard of! But that was maybe 2 questions - so just move on!

Yel - don't get discouraged. Know the basics and get 100% of the dosage calc questions right (that was actually my weakness). Also, pace yourself so you don't run out of time. Don't sit for too long on any one question like I did. If you don't know it, make an educated guess and move on. If you do happen to fail, at least you'll know what the exam is like to help focus you for the second try, and they give you a breakdown after the exam (even if you pass) so you can see what kind of questions you did well on and which category you were weak in.

However - You're going to pass!!! You're fresh off the NCLEX! So much of it is your confidence so just be positive! And remember, you don't need to get an A, just pass it!

OK my recruiter gave me a 2-page thing with website links and a few practice questions (with no answers to know if I answered them correctly). It didn't help much. I think one of the links was to the study guide I bought, I think that's how I ended up buying the book. It's called "Pharmacology" Prentice Hall Nursing Reviews & Rationales. ISBN # 013030462X. I bought it for $25.95 at Barnes & Noble. It has a CD ROM in it which I used because I thought it would be good practice to do it on a computer since the exam is computerized. I started to study the book, but there's SO much in it, so I realized it would be better to just start plowing through practice questions.

I'll sell you my book for $10 : )

I think it provided generic and brand name meds...? There were a few meds on there that I have NEVER heard of! But that was maybe 2 questions - so just move on!

Yel - don't get discouraged. Know the basics and get 100% of the dosage calc questions right (that was actually my weakness). Also, pace yourself so you don't run out of time. Don't sit for too long on any one question like I did. If you don't know it, make an educated guess and move on. If you do happen to fail, at least you'll know what the exam is like to help focus you for the second try, and they give you a breakdown after the exam (even if you pass) so you can see what kind of questions you did well on and which category you were weak in.

However - You're going to pass!!! You're fresh off the NCLEX! So much of it is your confidence so just be positive! And remember, you don't need to get an A, just pass it!

Thank you very much for the book information. I'm figuring that with 1-2 weeks of time for study, I can probably go ahead and read the entire book while answering all questions within the chapters and then, towards the end, just knock out all of the questions from the CD-ROM.

I'm figuring that by doing so, I'll definitely fair out well. Again, I'm still amazed by the fact that they would make it so ambiguous as to give you an entire book to serve as a "Study Guide". All other hospitals pretty much give you an outlined study guide that at the very least gives you the med list that is needed for study (Sometimes even if the list is exhaustive, just having the names goes a long way).

C'est la vie!

212

Hello to the person that private messaged me about the exam today. I am unable to reply to/send private messages, but if you want to ask questions here, I can try to answer them. I don't seem to have a very accurate memory about the actual test content though, but I'll try...