medication cards

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We have our students hand write medication cards focusing on pertinent pt info. We believe this helps internalize information. Yet it often seems like busy work to me. What is the policy for your clinical students? Has anyone seen research which supports just using the already prepared cards?

I teach practical nursing students. We have students complete a medication profile form. This form requires student to fill in pertinent information such as name, side effects, nursing implications. It is difficult to get students to read about the medications. I feel like the students will get more out of the information if they have to write it down at least once.

When i was in nursing school i HATED doing the medication cards. One of our teachers had us do a sheet that combined all the meds so we HAD TO compare SE and interactions. But after my 2nd quarted we stopped doing them, and we LOVED that. I have started making my own cards on med groups to study each week because my skills are not what they should be. Don't tell my coworkers or fellpw students but I wish we had had to do the profile sheets the whole way through now.

I KNOW I can just call Pharmacy and they will print me up a compatability sheet on all my residents, but I need to KNOW not just be able to call for something to look up in 2 days (or when ever it arrives)

I do wish I could find flash cards to review now though (found one set for some meds but was product specific, not generics.

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*** May we all have the serenity to accept what we cannot change, and the determination to change what we cannot accept. ***

Students today don't want to write anything, even notes in class! I allow students to use purchased cards, but have to highlight the priority info before submitted with their clinical paperwork each week. I think students do learn better when they write things out, but with hospital patients today, some have 10 meds to look up and our students have little time to prepare the cards in time for clinical.

now blue, you shouldn't be so negative! since i am a student today (even at my geriatric old age) i would disagree that we don't want to write anything...

is this, perhaps, an example of nurses who "eat their young"?

however, i feel that one really tried and tested method of getting students to learn about medication is to have them handling it as much as possible (under supervision, of course). remembering my earliest training days we learned a lot about the medications we were using because we WERE using them!

let your students be creative and devise their own methods - what works for one may not work for another - and so on...

happy nursing everyone

From a former student's perspective:

In our LVN program we had to do med cards for every pt under our care during hospital clinicals. I believe it really helped. We had to list all the meds our pts received, know the type of drug, how it is used, possible side effects, what was compatible or not, diluent if any to be used, how to teach pt about the drug, and how to assess the pt. Yes it was very time consuming but I think putting the med with a real pt and seeing the "big picture" as it related to the diagnosis instead of just reading a prepared card helped it to sink in better.

We have a thesis of the use of medication card of the staff nurses but we had to make a tool of it. What should I do?

Riane16: I am not sure I understand your question. What should you do about what? Are you researching the value of medication cards? Are you researching the number of instructors who require them? What is it you need to know? If you are doing a thesis I hope you realize this forum is not a way to get scientific data. However, we would be happy to help you form your research questions.

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