Drug Cards

As a nursing student you need two things...The most current drug guide (prentice hall or something similar) and a lab book. These will prove to be a valuable investment. I went to the prentice hall drug guide to see if I could acess the drug guide without the disc that comes with the drug book but I couldn't. I wouldn't suggest getting lab values anywhere off of the internet unless it is a credible source. Just because anything can be put on the internet. Try Amazon and see if you can find a drug guide and a Manual of Labratory diagnostic book.

I have the Davis Drug guide but it does not have any multivitamin's in it. I was hoping for another reliable source... I dont want to drop a bunch of money on another book and then find out it does not help me much more than what I have already.

thanks:)

In hindsite, when I was in nursing school several students would go to the ends of the earth to look up info and make drug cards on every drug the patient was on, including vitamins and topical creams etc. Often this information was more time consuming to find than it was worth. Finally one day our clinical instructor asked would some students please stop handing in such huge stacks of drug cards. She said it was not necessary for us to spend time looking up vitamins and creams etc. She wanted us to be learning about the medications for our patients disease process as well as any critical medications our patient may have been on.

My advice: Explain to your instructor that you are having a difficult time finding this information and ask for their suggestion. They may be like my instructor and prefer you spend your time on the medications for your patients disease processes and critical meds.

Best of Luck

Was there ever a resolution to the OP's question? I have a lab exam tonight which includes the necessity of 8 drug cards...I have 7 of them but can't find multivitamin in my (11th Edition) Davis Drug Book or my 'MediQuick Cards' (17th edition)...A fellow student mentioned that the CD Rom that accompanies the Davis Book has more drugs than the book...but my CD ROM drive is trashed and I therefore can't check to see if it includes multivitamins. Thanks in advance for your help. I also checked the links in one of the prior posts. While there is some data there, there's nothing I could find that could help create a complete drug card.

Btw, I should mention this is for an entry level med admin by PO exam...we're basically expected to know the 5 'rights' (as far as dose, not only making sure the MAR matches the Dx order, but also if the Dx order is appropriate dose) as well as appropriate nursing interventions (for example, apical pulse for digoxin)...I'm good with 7 of the listed drugs but couldn't find anything on multivitamins...

Future suggestion, davis drugs subscription is $30/ year and they do keep pretty up to date. There's very little drugs I needs to search all over for. And what I do is me and a few class mates join up together to cover the $30 then we all have access to it whenever we need it. There's never been a problem logging on from different locations at the same time or anything either. That way i can just copy & print the info onto blank index cards and it saves so much time!

http://http://www.drugguide.com/ddo/ub

For Lab tests we use Mosby's "Manual of Diagnostic and Laboratory Tests". It has been very helpful.

I also like to go to http://http://www.abebooks.com/

to get books. Most you can get used for really cheap. Example, I paid $3 including shipping for my box of drug cards with CD included. Even text books, if you have the ISBN number you can search by that so you kow you're getting teh right book.

Just some suggestions, good luck!