Fast paced Pharmacology!

CrazierThanYou · Jan 12, 2011

I just finished pharmacology. Ours was a 16 week course and not a whole lot of time was spent on it.

I'm getting ready to start second semester if this snow ever moves out of here! We have to buy another pharm book for this semester so I guess there is going to be more.

jjjoy, LPN · Jan 12, 2011

Sometimes the way content was covered in nursing school it felt like a big game of CYA on the school's part. Or perhaps trying to cover impossible accreditation curriculum demands?

The students were assigned 1000-page books for a 10-week course. Each section would focus on a different particular system or category; the material generally didn't "build" on itself. Clearly, there's no way the students can actually cover all that material in any really thorough way much less retain the information! But whatever drug or condition a student might come across in clinical or on an exam, the student couldn't claim "we never covered that" because it was part of in your coursework, even if that just means that it appeared once in the thousands of pages of texts. Actually, nursing "texts" are more like reference books than instructional materials.

ErinRN2B · Jan 12, 2011

We had a 16-week Pharmacology course last semester. We didn't go too deep into the chemistry and pharmacokenetics and focused more on commonly administered drugs and drug interactions, side effects, etc. It was a tough class, but I personally found it easier than Med/Surg I and got an A in it. I know that a lot of other students struggled with it though - one even went as far to write an anonymous letter to the dean of our nursing school about it being too difficult. :uhoh3: Now, I think that they're considering breaking it up into a two-semester course. We didn't go into dosages in our Pharm class, really - we had some basic dosage calc math in Med/Surg I and will cover it more in Med/Surg II and other classes.

I'm the only person I know who got an A in the class, and I did will on the proctored ATI test too. I didn't do anything too fancy to study, I just paid attention in lecture and read the chapters in the textbook. I did buy a set of Pharmacology flash cards ("Pharm Phlash") that I thought made studying for exams easier.

pitaya · Jan 12, 2011

Our school decided to condense pharmacolgy - the math, the chemistry, the names of drugs, the reactions, everything into a 10 week course! It used to be covered in 30 weeks but they are trying to save time I guess. It is really intense, and I am struggling. We are also taking adult health and nutrition. Isnt pharmacology and administering drugs a HUGE part of nursing? How long does your school spend on it?

6 weeks plus optional review course later on. I learned more in that 6 week class than I thought possible. It was great, mostly due in part to the most amazing teacher ever. I got an A. 10 weeks is totally doable, so don't be intimidated. :)