What would you like to know?

[Sparrow23]

If you had a pharmacist giving a general presentation (to you and other nurses) on how drugs work in the body, what information would you want to learn or have a mini-refresher course on? What would be most useful to you? Any other pharmacology topics you would find very useful?

Any ideas would be great! Thank you!

[tokmom, BSN, RN]

Half life, max dose, contraindications, simple stuff like that...

[tyvin, BSN, RN]

It also depends on what area of nursing you are in. A psych nurse will want to know different meds then say someone who works in the NICU.

[GHGoonette, BSN, RN]

It also depends on what area of nursing you are in. A psych nurse will want to know different meds then say someone who works in the NICU.

Absolutely. You could give a day's lecture just on drugs (opiates, anaesthetic agents, muscle relaxants, volatile liquids etc etc) used in theater, but that's not going to be much use to ward nurses, except for delayed side-effects and reversal agents.

Opiates are always interesting, as are benzodiazepines, because they are used in most areas at some time or another, and it's vital that nurses know the side effects and drug interactions. Drugs used in premedications, anti muscarinics, it's all useful knowledge, but you might want to focus on what's used in specific units.

[lckrn2pa]

You don't want a pharmacist giving you any kind of lecture, trust me. My pharm class notes were prepared by a pharmD and presented by an MD who was confused a lot of the time by the over the top material. Second term he threw out the PharmD's power points and did his own. just my 2c on it tho.

[Whispera, MSN, RN]

lckrn2pa: 2 pharmacists taught my graduate school pharmacology class--they were awesome! I think it depends on the pharmacist as to if they can teach or not.

Yup, you need to scale it down to the needs of the people to whom the presentation will be given. Otherwise it becomes a bunch of words that get filed away never to be seen again....

Besides what's already been written, I think brief information about new drugs on the market, expected new drugs, and drugs removed from the market would be helpful.