How do you learn all the drugs?

1. I have my first Pharm exam next thursday and I have a set of 75 drugs to learn. Has anyone found a great system for memorizing them? I have to know the drug's 2 names, the classification, MOA, Major Side Effects, How to apply the nursing process specifics for the drug class (what does this mean?) and relate patient/family teaching. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

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2. 

   About LWildman

   Joined: Sep '05; Posts: 48; Likes: 1

   5 Comments

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3. 
   Sep 15, '05

   hi! i think that this is one of those review review review issues. so i think lots of folks use note cards with all that info. nursing process would be your assess, plan, implement, reeval...things like pain level, lab results, vs, etc...good luck!
4. 
   Sep 15, '05

   At the hospital I always see the student nurses with the meds on notecards. They make them like flash cards. Good Luck !
5. 
   Sep 15, '05

   What I've found, thanks to my teachers making me do it, is writing out med cards. It is time consuming and tedious, but looking at it, I'm recognizing more meds than not anymore and owe it at least in part to making the cards.
   
   I use 4x6 cards, med name(s) on top, with all the important information, plus anything I've seen in clinical settings (like confusion on Ambien for older patients that wasn't in the drug book). And I take them everywhere, so if I have a moment I can look at them/write out new ones. Figure out what the formulary at your clinical sites are and focus on those as you will be using them the most.
   
   Just my $.02
   Tom
6. 
   Sep 15, '05

   practice and try to read a few a day not all of them. Since you only have a week, 10 a day is to many to learn in my opinion. But if you try studying all 75 at once it will all be a blurr.
   
   We have 15-20 drugs on each exam so that works out to about 80-100 drugs per semester for a full time Nursing Student. What I do is study one drug a day, until I know it pretty good. I read it in the morning, in the afternoon and again in the evening. At the end of the week I review all the drugs I reviewed that week and add in the ones from the previous week. By the time each exam roles around I have read each drug about 10 times and at that point you just hope they don't ask some silly little side effect that you don't know.
   
   Good luck it is tough to study drugs, but thjey are all over the NCLEX so you need to know them.
   
   dave :wink2:
7. 
   Sep 15, '05

   I used to say the same when I became a pharmacy tech, well practice, practice and more practice is what it usually takes.

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