If I Could Just Pass Pharmacology...

RN and Mommy · Oct 24, 2005

I too am struggling with Pharmacology! It is hard. Our teacher lists drugs to know for the test, but then tests us on all the drugs in the chapter. What is the point to make a list...just tell us to know them all! Good Luck!

Fun2, BSN, RN · Oct 25, 2005

I'm sorry you're having such a rough time. Hang in there!

Soon you will graduate!

Good luck, study hard!

fraidknot · Oct 25, 2005

don't worry.... it gets better..... just hang in there and use your fellow students as a support system.... they're all going through the same thing!!! you're not in this alone!!! our pharm finals are in 2 days!!!:chair:

Fun2, BSN, RN · Oct 25, 2005

don't worry.... it gets better..... just hang in there and use your fellow students as a support system.... they're all going through the same thing!!! you're not in this alone!!! our pharm finals are in 2 days!!!:chair:

good luck to you too, fraidknot, and welcome to allnurses.com!

pink2blue1 · Oct 25, 2005

I just might graduate! Pharmacology is soooooooo hard. If i could just pass this class I have no doubt I will graduate May 2007. My actual clinicals are great but the classes and tests kill me. I need encouragement!

I have not started Pharm yet, we start Nov 21st and it's 9 days long and we have to pass with 85% or we are booted out of the program. At my school clinicals start only AFTER we pass Pharm. Good luck, we haven't even gotten there yet and are totally scared of failing out.

artistnurse · Oct 25, 2005

I have Pharm in my near future also and dont know what to expect. What's making it so difficult? :rolleyes:

Krenee2007 · Oct 25, 2005

Whats making it so hard is the information. It's too much when u still have to study nutrition, know all the meds for your patient for the next day, and review procedures to actually perform on a real person the next morning! It's just too much!

SCmomof3, RN · Oct 29, 2005

Whats making it so hard is the information. It's too much when u still have to study nutrition, know all the meds for your patient for the next day, and review procedures to actually perform on a real person the next morning! It's just too much!

AMEN to that!!!!

Pchez31 · Oct 29, 2005

I will be starting Pharm in the near future too! Maybe some of you could share some tips on how to get through it.

LWildman · Oct 30, 2005

My main way to study for Pharm is to make an excel worksheet with the name, classification, MOA, Side Effects, Nursing Considerations and Edu/Misc colums. Then I just fill them in with all the drugs I have on my study guide. It seems to help alot although I still didn't do too well on my Adrenergic drugs (I just don't get it!). Hopefully that will help you. Gosh I wish you all had my Pharm teacher-he is amazing! Maybe one day when I'm bored I'll scan all my notes and post them on a website. HAHA! "One day when I'm bored"

1Tulip · Nov 1, 2005

LWildman has the idea. When I was in graduate school, I had to take Pharm with the 2nd year med students. They/we had 2 hrs of lecture 5 days a week for the entire semester. As you can imagine, the faculty covered HUGE amounts of info and almost every drug manufactured.

I didn't know how to do Excel then (maybe they didn't even have it in those days) but I made extensive charts similar to LWildman.

Vis: drugs with autonomic actions. I had to back up and make another chart with each organ system and the actions of alpha, beta adrenergic and cholinergic neurotransmitters on each of those tissues. Then, when I had to know what a drug did, all I had to memorize was whether the agent was a beta antagonist, or an alpha agonist or whatever. In addition, the old nemonic "Cant see, can't pee, can't spit, can't s--t" got me through 80% of all the agents that work on the cholinergic receptors.

No way around it. It's just hard. No one gets past this without a lot of sweat. BTW: There were two RN's in that class and we smoked the med students!