Hi Everyone...please help

LVN_instructor · May 5, 2006

To be perfectly honest, there is no easy way to learn the meds.

What I tell my students is repetition is the key. Make an old fashioned drug card everytime you run across a med that you are not familiar with, even if you have made one before. Reveiw them. Often. Have a family member ask you about a drug and you tell them the info listed on the card. (while they hold it of course). If you do not fair that well, then look at the card and put it back in the pile, and do it again. THe ones that you are having the most trouble with...write down the name, make new drug cards.

The other thing to remember is that you will never know all the meds, and the things that you do know about the ones out there may change (dosage indications etc. ) I keep my students focused on the meds that are most commonly administered at the clinical area where they are currently at. That makes the information relevant to them.

suebird3 · May 5, 2006

Weclome to allnurses.com! I moved your post to a more appropriate Forum, where you will get more responses.

Good luck!

Suebird :)

Daytonite, BSN, RN · May 5, 2006

Problems with my computer. Posted twice. See post below. Sorry.

Daytonite, BSN, RN · May 5, 2006

I've been a practicing nurse for 30 years. The meds I know best are the ones I work with all the time and am giving to patients. If you go to any of the Internet drugstore sites they most all list the top 100 or 200 best selling meds that the physicians are ordering these days. There are certain medications that are consistently ordered for specific diseases and conditions. Sometimes you can find those when looking for information about specific disease on the Family Practice Notebook website or the eMedicine website. If you like I can give you links to all these websites if you do not know how to find them yourself.

With your learning of medications, keep things as simple as you can. When I was in nursing school 32 years ago we all laughed when we were asked what the side effects of a drug were. "Nausea, vomiting and rash". That's pretty standard. Look for a unique side effect. Certain specific drugs have unique side effects and, sure as shootin', that's what you're likely to get a test question about. For example, I was just looking at this recently. . .a side effect of an antibiotic called vancomycin can result in a person's chest developing a bright red rash. It's called red man syndrome and is actually due to an allergy to the medication. However, red man syndrome is very specific to this drug. Do you understand?

LoriH · May 13, 2006

:) Thanks for the good advice. I truly appreciate it.

lisabeth · May 13, 2006

I have already started making flashcards, ect for my Pharmacology class. We have to make a drug notebook, and I know it will be a lot of work, but I am looking forward to it. I have already started reading through my book, and will continue to do so for the next two weeks until class starts and maybe at least at first it wont be such a killer.

I think this class is going to be very interesting as well as VERY challenging.

VickyRN, MSN, DNP, RN · May 13, 2006

I have already started making flashcards, ect for my Pharmacology class. We have to make a drug notebook, and I know it will be a lot of work, but I am looking forward to it. I have already started reading through my book, and will continue to do so for the next two weeks until class starts and maybe at least at first it wont be such a killer.
I think this class is going to be very interesting as well as VERY challenging.

:yeahthat: Way to go!!! :yelclap: Pharmacology may be very difficult, but you are approaching this subject matter very proactively and you are doing something which all nursing students should do - you are actually reading the book! The principles of pharmacology are so vital to what we do as a nurse, as errors in medication administration are among the most potentially deadly errors a nurse can make.

Daytonite, BSN, RN · May 13, 2006

here is a site i found recently that has drugs arranged by category rather than having to search for them by their names.

http://www.globalrph.com/druglist.htm

here is their home page

http://www.globalrph.com/ - has drug listings, instructions for iv dilutions in mixing piggyback meds, you can search for specific drugs (uses rxlist.com), or chose the drug table button to get lists of medications arranged by categories. clicking on the infectious disease button takes you to an infectious disease database arranged by disease which give you listings of antibiotic choices that can be used for treatment. there are a number of medical calculators here including one to calculate drip rates on some of the commonly used icu medications. there are also links to a video library.

and, here a site you can use to help you make nicely printed drug cards. if you know how to fomat your printer and scale down the card to a nice size (like i can't!), you'll be in business!

http://www.edruginfo.com/qthome.htm - e-druginfo.com's gateway page into medi-quik construct-a-card. you need to register, but it's free. you have to input all the information yourself. this constructor merely prints it onto a pre-formatted form. in playing around with the constructor i found that you could not go back otherwise you lost your input data. i was able to shrink the finished card down to about 7" x 5" but my printer didn't print any border. more likely, i just don't know how to apply a border or shrink the card down smaller! :imbar

agent · May 17, 2006

great post daytonite

NaomieRN · May 17, 2006

Great site daytonite!

Daytonite, BSN, RN · May 17, 2006

here is another medication link:

http://www.brooksidepress.org/products/military_obgyn/pharmacy/medications.htm - a huge list of medications you can link to for information. contains a lot of commonly used ob/gyn medications. from a military source for ob/gyn