Drug

Read the Drug Guides and the Dosage Handbooks. Read, read, and read some more. Look at the patient/family education handouts regarding the medications. Working the the ICU it is essential you know the peak effects of medications, first pass effects, mechanism of action, pharmacodynamics, interactions, how to administer the medication, etc.

Seriously, take the Dosage Handbook and read all the details of the medication, make flashcards for medications and drug calculations used in a Code (Epi, Bicarb, Morphine, Versed, Mag, Calcium etc). Read the patient/family education handouts as they are typically written at a layperson reading level and can help you understand the highlights a little better.

Pharm Flash Cards are always your friends.

Review books are always your friends: I like Pharmacology (Lippincott Illustrated Reviews Series) for a graphically based, high-level review and Basic and Clinical Pharmacology for a more in-depth review.

You can also try using mnemonics - memory devices. Just google pharmacology mnemonics.

There is a video series on this site called "Drawing Pharmacology" and the Dr. Guerra has also written a very short book called: Memorizing Pharmacology

Good luck!

You will find that as you prepare to give the meds in real life and look them up, you will start remembering them.

It can help to memorize classes of drugs and uses and side effects common to all drugs in that class. Then for specific drugs you only have to remember the 1-2 things that are distinct from the rest of the class. This is how my pharmocology instructor encouraged us to study and I've found it really useful. Particularly in the clinical setting where I may encounter a drug I haven't seen before, but by recognizing the class I can glean a fair amount of initial information before using a clinical resource (e.g. micromedex) to quickly skim the information I don't know.