New Nurse Needs Medication Help!!!

[ReannaRN]

Hello All,

To begin, let me just say to all of you out there discouraged by not finding a job immediately...it will happen if you perservere! Almost a year after graduation and I finally landed my dream job! Now the hard part begins. I'm very excited, anxious, relieved, emotions, emotions...but most of all just happy to finally be part of something I've been working so hard for. There is a lot I have yet to learn but my plan of action is to just practice what I know and safely build from there. I have no problem admitting where I have lack of knowledge and making the time to find out what I need to know to get the job done. I garauntee that this will be hard to make time for but I know that I'm new and no one becomes a skilled and successful nurse by faking it til they make it.

On that note...I really struggle with medication identification and knowledge base and this is such an important part of nursing and not one you want to make a mistake with. Of course I'll look up drugs I don't know as I go and make sure I use 5 Rights and know why the patient is getting each one. But, my question to all of you seasoned nurses out there or maybe students with some fresh know how...IS THERE A QUICK AND DIRTY resource or sum up or any sort of reference out there that I can use as an additional item to help me learn this vast amount of meds I'm responsible for knowing?!?!?!

I'm looking for basic drug categories with the most common examples, most common side effect(s), potential complication and most impt nursing consideration(s). Even in school I had a very hard time with this aspect of nursing. Please email me also if you have any resources you would like to share!

Thanks for reading & all of you out there still looking please don't give up hope. Health care needs you and you deserve it!

~Tinsa