Nursing School

Rote memorization is generally what pharmacology is about. There are some concepts you will apply, such as pharmacokinetics. You won't learn all the meds. A lot of the meds, including uncommon ones, you'll end up looking up on the floor and learning as you go. The key is knowing in general what meds do, which will give you ability to interpret these meds that are unfamiliar better through action, how they'll interact with the disease and other meds, etc.

Each program will vary though. Ask upperclassmen how they studied for pharm, what to expect, etc.

There is no shortcut to learning pharmacology. You simply have to put in the time and there will be plenty of memorization, too. I know some people suggest flash cards, etc... If that works for you, great! I'm a firm believer in putting the time in and learning it, plain and simple. As far as how to learn it? What has worked for you up to this point? If you're doing an accelerated BSN program then you most likely have a previous Bachelor's degree. Look at all of the classes you have taken to this point and reflect on what has worked best when it comes to studying an information dense topic. I did an accelerated BSN program and we were required to take pharmacology as well as pathophysiology. I'm going to say it again, put as much time as you can into learning pharmacology (and if you also have to take pathophysiology) because they form the basis of your daily practice as a nurse. As far as knowing all of the meds, depending on where you work after you graduate, you'll likely need to know all of the meds you learned in school and then some. Or at least you should know the fundamentals of those meds, like drug class, general side effects, and mechanism of action. If you work in med/surg, you'll see a very diverse set of medications used. If you work in a specialty, you might see a less diverse set of medications used. But you need to know your meds. Period. I don't mean to scare you, but it worries me when I ask new nurses (in my practice) how loop diuretics work or what a potential side effect of a beta blocker is and they look at me with a blank stare...

Ah, the good old Patho/Pharm courses. As a recent grad of an accelerated BSN program, flash cards worked the best for me. I purchased the app Mental Case for my Mac, iPhone, and iPad. I would type up all my flash cards and sync across all the devices and use it to study during any downtime I had available.

Thank you everybody! I bought the Kaplan NCLEX med flash cards and getting a head start by studying now. I will definitely take everybody's advice :)

Blood, sweat, and tears. And then comes day 2. Don't put the cart before the horse. Just pass pharm and then worry about the rest when you hopefully become an RN. Good luck.

One of the things that helped with pharm was having a good understanding of what was happening physiologically in the body. With an understanding of the physiology it made learning the different drugs easier. Instead of trying to memorize a bunch of information for each drug, knowing how it worked and where made it easier to know what the indications, adverse effects and such were.

It is a good idea to know the classes of medications. You'll start noticing the endings (lol, pril, pam, etc.) and even if you don't know the med, you will know the class. You will learn MANY meds in nursing school, you are not expected to know everything when you start working. There will be meds you see when you start working that you never even dealt with in nursing school. It is good to make flashcards and write down what is UNIQUE to the med. NCLEX and nursing school tests usually ask questions that are unique to the med. It is a lot of memorizing but you'l start to be more familiar with many of them once you're in clinical. Good luck!

I also feel you need to learn the classes. You don't need to study them now, as pretty much all of it is not going to make sense to you. Enjoy your time off this summer and then when school starts up and you have the class ask them how they want you to learn.

We did the classes of meds. Then my professor would take the main meds out of that category for us to know. But as long as I knew the suffixes, I could tell you pretty much what every med is and does. You will have to learn certain ones especially for NCLEX. But don't get yourself in a tizzy now over pharm. I ended up with an A in the class. I made med cards and learned my classifications.