Failing Pharmacology

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I'm a first semester clinical student whose average in Pharm I is a 70. I need at least a 77 to pass. I have 2 more chances to bring that up but one of those chances is a cumulative final. I think I know what my two problems are but I need help in figuring out a way of overcoming them. Any advice you can offer will greatly be appreciated as I am really scared that I might fail.

1) My professor is new and is a pharmacist by trade. Judging from comments she's made, I get the sense she doesn't feel nurses are responsible and intelligent. Thus, she purposely makes her exams difficult to ensure those who pass are adequate enough to do the job. While I understand her reasoning, I feel she doesn't calibrate her exams to our level. More seasoned professors of mine have taken into consideration that we are new to this NCLEX style of questioning and calibrate their exams to our level. She makes them so difficult. I tend to do well when I take my study guide questions that come with our textbooks but hers are so beyond hard that I always end up doing bad.

2) There is too much information and not enough time. I have at least one exam per week and b/c I am a slow learner, I need to focus from morning to night on those exams, which leaves little time to focus on Pharm. One thing my professor does is include almost every medication mention in the chapters on her exams so I quite frankly need more time to basically memorize the entire extbook. I would say cut back on studying for my other exams but truth be told, I went from being a straight A student to now being a B- students. I'm afraid cutting back on studying for my other exams will jeopardize my standing in my other classes.

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1) stop blaming the professor. You've had a couple exams by now, you know how she is asking the questions, you know how she uses the information. The other teachers are not benefiting you in the long run by dumbing down their exams

2) nursing as a whole is going to be too much info and not enough time. I'm not trying to be mean, but you're NEVER going to feel like you have a grasp on everything. I'm always feeling like I"m behind the 8-ball. If you need special accomodations d/t a learning disability please contact your disability office at school

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Specializes in Hospital Education Coordinator.

she is probably getting the questions from a question bank supplied by the textbook publisher. They are harder to challenge. I recommend you get a study partner and discuss classes of drugs and major side effects plus whatever is being emphasized in class. This is a difficult subject. Period.

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1) When 7 out of 11 students are failing--two of whom are LPNs & one of whom is in jeopardy of losing her academic scholarship b/c of this one class--then some blame lies on the teacher, especially since she takes pride and brags about the fact that her exams are so difficult that most students in the class are failing. She’s a great teacher and I feel I learn a lot from her in class but her exams are unfair. She herself has acknowledged the fact that when she goes over the exams with me, she can tell that I’ve studied for them and I do in fact know my stuff.

2) I've accepted the fact that I will no longer be a straight A student since it's never enough time to learn all that I need to know for my courses. However, if you think back to your days of nursing school, I'm sure that even you have to find it preposterous for a student to memorize every single medication mentioned in the textbook, even if she did not go it over in class. No nurse no matter what knows every single medication. And this is not laziness on my part since every med I come across in clinical that is new to me, I make index cards with information on them to study from. I have friends in other classes who are told prior to the exams which medications they have to know. That makes much more sense to me instead of stating “there are 100 medications in the chapters. You need to know all of them.” Furthermore, effective learning is diminished when students are more worried about memorizing every single fact about every single medication instead of understanding exactly how it works.

3) While I do admit that I find her exams extremely unfair, I am also aware that I have no choice but to find a way to cope with it. Hence the reason I posted this on this forum. If you knew prior that all you can offer me was criticism instead of looking back at your time and giving me useful advice on how to best cope with my situation, then you shouldn’t have posted a response.

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Check the student assistance board on this site - scroll to the bottom, there are pharm flashcards that can be printed. I used them a lot for studying.

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She's actually not. I do well on those question bank questions supplied by the textbook. She makes up her own questions.

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Specializes in ICU / Urgent Care.

Nothing to it but to do it. Study harder

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ps, still in school so I'm well aware of how things currently are. I'm smack dab in the middle. like malenurse says, study harder and smarter

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I haven't actually started Nursing School yet, so I haven't had a "human" pharmacology course, but I did take Pharmacology in Vet Tech school. It was a lot of memorization. Here's what helped me: Knowing my Physiology and my chemistry. I started focusing on the categories of drugs we were working with. Why did that category exist? What systems does it work on? Why are these drugs included in it? What do they all have in common? Once I had a solid understanding of that, it was a little easier to focus on the differences between the drugs in that category. I can tell you that I never memorized every little detail I read. But knowing my physiology helped me figure out what I hadn't memorized a lot of the time, and that left time to memorize the unique and important properties of each drug.

And like others have said, you just have to study harder and smarter. I would recommend a study group. Get together and quiz each other. Then teach each other when someone gets an answer wrong.

Pharmacology is hard stuff. It's good that you're talking to your teacher about it. But honestly, she doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Lots of teachers have her style. It may seem unfair when your other teachers are a little easier on you, but she really is the one doing you the biggest favor. It's hard now, but when you're done with it all and working in the field, you'll appreciate how solid your knowledge is in this area.

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Thank you for giving me advice I can acutally use.

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Adding to what GaGeek said, I think something that helps with ANY of the nursing classes is to do concept maps for what you're studying. I am a HUGE flash card person, so it was really difficult for me to let go of my 3x5s ;) but I swear it has made all the difference. So, if it were me, I'd do one page of beta-blockers, for example. In one area write the names of the drugs in that category. In another area, what specifically do they do? What parts of the body do they affect? What are the side effects? Interactions or contraindications? If there's something different with one particular drug in the category, draw a line from that name and make a bubble and write what's different about that particular drug. So basically make a big map with sections related to that class of drugs. I personally find this a much, much better way to study because all of the information is together in an understandable way on one page! I have been doing this this semester with disease processes and it has made a huge, HUGE difference in the amount of time I study and my recall of the information. I don't know if this is helpful but it has helped me a LOT so passing it on!! The best to you! :)

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Here are my suggestions:

1) Don't buy in to the "the teacher is unfair" cop out... it is a cop out and if anybody can pass, everybody could pass.

2) Capture the small bits of time... walking to class, waiting in line at the store, sitting on the john, etc to study.

3) Use graduated interval recall... that is, look at something, waiting 3 minutes and quiz yourself... look at only what you're stumbling on and keep going. 7 minutes later, do it again... 15 minutes later, do it again... 60 minutes later, do it again...

4) Don't waste time reviewing things you already know... it's easy to do and, you're still studying, after all, but not using your time effectively... think, "value-added activity"

5) As much as possible, use a physiology book to help understand WHY drugs do what they do.

6) Some fabulously intelligent, diligent, and generous nurse made these flashcards and shared them... download them and use them (and don't forget the 'kudos' button): https://allnurses.com/nursing-student-assistance/pharmacology-flashcards-595483.html (wow, number 4 on Google... pretty danged cool).

~~~

Also, talk to the teacher to determine if you've got any real hope of passing the class. If not, bail... but keep studying for next time around. You may be surprised to discover that there's an unannounced curve that will come to play at the end of it all.

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