How many hours a week did you REALLY have to study for pharmacology?

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Our syllabus says we will have to realistically plan on studying 20-30 hours a week - just for pharm. I thought it was a stretch until I started working on my first chapters due when school starts. 11 chapters in the first 3 weeks, the other 100 or so in the other 12 weeks. I think 20-30 hours a week might be right after all.

Not to mention that the material is difficult, which I'm sure you all know.

Thoughts? Should I really just schedule 25 hours a week for pharm?

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Specializes in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation.

Tbh, I didn't really try hard for pharm. It wasn't something that was hard, it literally was memorization (though they ALWAYS say that you can't memorize it all, you just need to relate it, which is true and false). Yes, there are a lot of meds, but if you focus on the classifications rather than individual meds (except for the common ones), the S&S, contraindications, etc, the class is fairly easy. Easier than theory at least. So I guess I ended up averaging probably 5 or 6 hours of study time for pharm (most of my study time went to theory of course) and ended the course with an 88 (sadly came into the final with an 89)

Flashcards will get you through pharm.

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Completely agree with PP. I passed pharm with a 95. It is memorization and knowing your suffixes and classifications. Funny one for you. Tadalafil. Hmm what is that? And erectile dysfunction drug. Get it tada afil? Tada it's up!! Afil, yelp its feeling up with blood alright. Lol I know that sounds completely horrible but I mean its nursing school. Whatever helps you remember. What can I say, I had incredible pharm instructor and she taught us nifty tricks like that!!!

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Specializes in Hospice.
Completely agree with PP. I passed pharm with a 95. It is memorization and knowing your suffixes and classifications. Funny one for you. Tadalafil. Hmm what is that? And erectile dysfunction drug. Get it tada afil? Tada it's up!! Afil, yelp its feeling up with blood alright. Lol I know that sounds completely horrible but I mean its nursing school. Whatever helps you remember. What can I say, I had incredible pharm instructor and she taught us nifty tricks like that!!!

This made me :roflmao:

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Specializes in Hospitalist Medicine.

I'm not gonna lie to you...Pharm takes a lot of study time. I didn't study 25 hours per week, though. More like 14 to 16, and that includes a 2 hour Supplemental Instruction session once a week. Some Pharm courses also include Med Math (ours did) and it can be graded separately or given a pass/fail only. Our Med Math was pass/fail and you had to get a 90% or better on all math quizzes or you failed the entire course. I was nervous about that at first, but once you learn the different ways to calculate, it's pretty straight forward, simple math.

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