NCLEX Pharmacology is Seemingly Impossible

[MedicalPartisan]

I'm not talking about classifications here. I'm talking about the questions NCLEX is actually asking. There's no way to group these these implementation rules and I've no clue how to study them. Take X in the evening only, take Y with this or that to increase absorption, take Z on an empty stomach. It's inane at best. It seems most tricky with psych meds. In Saunders 6E NCLEX review, there are about 67 psych pharmacology questions and each one bares a new requirement. Obviously my 'impossible' attitude isn't going to help me, but how do you study this? Most threads here refer to meds and their classifications.

[katfuter]

The more questions you do, the better you will get a hang of it. I studied through uworld and most med topics would get repeated over and over so you eventually memorize it. Also, I wrote down any pharm facts I knew I had trouble memorizing/knowing on a notepad, which tends to help it stick.

I only studied uworld the last 3 weeks before my exam and I passed. Pharm was my worst subject too and the one I was most nervous about.

[Jules A, MSN]

Hopefully others will write in if my experience is unusual but pharmacology was always a strong point of mine so much to my disappointment my LPN, RN, PsychNP and FNP boards had minimal true med questions. If I were to guess maybe #6 or so? No biggie and my guess is if I missed all of them I probably would have been ok. I tend to test pretty good and passed the LPN and RN with the minimum number of questions, no clue with the NP boards, so I don't think it had to feed me easier questions.

[chelsieblondie]

I'm terrible with meds and feel the same way about them, how the heck I was supposed to know all this crap? I only memorized a couple key things on each classification and wasn't even confident on those few things. On my NCLEX I got all 265 questions and I was asked a ton of meds questions and I somehow passed. Try not to stress and let the meds bring you down!

[noelly10]

I never studied meds.

Passed in 75 questions in under an hour. You'll never study enough meds to prepare you for the meds they throw at you. So spend more time on some of your weaker areas.

[stwbrypocky]

I had the same problem when I studied for NCLEX. I tried following Kaplan's advice of classifying drugs together but got overwhelmed real fast. I went through Kaplan's qtrainers and qbank as much as I could and wrote down every question I missed into a notebook and highlighted meds so they stand out more since I knew they were a weak area for me. I don't know what method of learning is best for you, but I learn by writing things down and reading them over and over.

[NICUmiiki, DNP, NP]

The NCLEX through some impossible drugs at me. Never heard of them and couldn't classify them based on pre-/suffixes.

I erred of the side safety. Which one of these answers is safest for the patient. I passed, so I guess I didn't fail pharm.

[Nurse Mek]

I looked up medication suffixes, prefixes, or roots, and just focused on that. When you see meds in the exam, they add bits of information that you wouldn't really need to know the specific drug, unless it's something that you would TYPICALLY see in a hospital setting (at least, from my experience).

drug prefixes, roots, and suffixes, drug terms, drug terminology