Pathophysiology and Pharmocology!?

Editorial Team / Admin · Sep 28, 2015

Welcome to AN! There's a couple of forums you may find helpful- the Nursing Student forum and the Study Tips for Nursing Students. Both can be found by clicking on the Students link in the yellow bar across the top of the webpage.

emilyr95 · Sep 29, 2015

Does anyone have any tips for studying for pathophysiology and pharmacology?

I have made flashcards, read the chapters, studied with a partner, etc. My last test I earned a 77.5% on it which is JUST passing in my nursing program.

Dogen · Sep 29, 2015

1. Talk to your professor. Ask if there's a particular area (based on your tests) where you should be spending more time. For instance, damn near every class I've ever taken pulls the majority of test material from lecture rather than the textbook. You might also be going down rabbit holes, and trying to understand the pathophys of a disease process more than you need. Talk to your faculty so you have a clear idea of what they want you to know, and how they expect you to study. Office hours are severely underutilized.

2. Teach someone else. Find a study partner who's as diligent as you - rather than someone who "studies" by talking for two hours while you try not to club them to death with your textbook. Pick a topic and then go back and forth saying snippets of information about that topic, correcting each other or double checking when you're unsure. You'll retain both the information you teach and the information they teach better than just reading it.

3. Go for breadth first, then depth. Learn a little bit about everything, skimming for main ideas, then go back and get a little deeper. As you do this, think about how topics interact. If you're learning about heart failure and have already covered kidney function, how do they interact? How does BP relate to kidney function and CHF? How does atherosclerosis relate to BP, kidney function, and CHF? This is called "deep processing," and will make things make more sense and increase your retention. It's also clinically useful because your patient will never JUST have high BP or glomerular nephritis, they'll have a lot of things going on at once.

4. Repetition breeds memory. Review material frequently, not once before/during class and once before the test. If you study a few times a week every week then you can fold what you're learning now into what you already know (how does New Topic interact with atherosclerosis, BP, renal function, CHF, etc?) and process it deeply, forming connections between ideas, which increases retention.

I'm not a fan of flashcards because they're rote memorization, or surface level processing, and that information is easy to forget. If you spent an hour doing flashcards versus an hour teaching the same material to a classmate you'd be virtually guaranteed to retain the information you taught longer and be able to retrieve it more completely.

Good luck!

ciao_amore616 · Sep 29, 2015

I was in your shoes about a year ago! It all seems so difficult but once you get past those two you'll feel ready to get into the good stuff.

For patho I would print out the lecture slides before class. Then during class I would take notes as the professor would go through the lecture. I got lucky because my professor would give us a study guide of sorts. It was a list of general topics we should know. If your professor does no such thing and you feel lost in a sea of information, try to make your own list by noticing things the professor spends extra time talking about or explicitly says will be on the test. Let your list guide you but not limit you/ I would read the chapter once and then when it came time to start studying for the test I would go over my list of topics and read the pertinent sections again while taking notes. Drawing yourself pictures or charts or thought maps can really help if you learn that way.

For pharm it helps to really get to know classifications before you try to memorize specific things about specific drugs. Like if I know how diuretics work then it's not so hard when I start learning more specifics about Lasix, for example.

As for critical thinking questions the style may just take some getting used to. It helps to underline key words and then think about how those key words relate to the answers, if that makes sense. You may want to look into tutorials on how to approach these types of questions. Sounds silly but trust me tutorials are out there. If your school requires use of ATI I know they have like an interactive tutorial type thing.

Lastly, I highly recommend just doing as many practice questions as possible on a chapter you just read. Books may have supplemently workbooks that may help or may come with access to questions online. Try to a lot of these prior to tests!

Editorial Team / Admin · Sep 29, 2015

Threads merged.

emilyr95 · Sep 29, 2015

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it :)