Great pharm advice

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Specializes in student; help!.

From another board I'm on, by M Rhodes-Gloor, RN, PCCN: learn the classes of the drug first. If you know the physiology, you know the major side effects and contraindications, as well as actions. For example: anything ending in -olol is a beta blocker, block the beta adrenergic cascade, side effects include hypotension and bradycardia . This way you are not spending endless hours memorizing lists of stuff. Know your classes, actions, and physiology.

When you think about it for a few seconds, it seems like a no-brainer, but I'll freely admit it hadn't occured to me to look at suffixes to determine class.

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Suffixes alone don't determine all drug classes of a drug. Be careful with that. Some do contribute to a specific class whereas others were just pulled from the alphabet soup saturation commonly associated within the realm of pharmacy. :)

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Specializes in student; help!.

Damn! Everytime I hear a great idea, it turns out there's a caveat. I suppose that's true for life, too, though.

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But when you are studying for a test, the suffix can help.

Good luck!

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