Pharm distress!

[Niquolea26]

I made it to second semester! The problem is pharmacology...it's 80% online, meets once a week with a scattered instructor and has no textbook to study from. The exam is all over the place and it's strictly based on ATI's Pharmacology Made Easy (yeah, right). I have no idea how to study any of the content or even take notes because one module takes 4 hours WITHOUT note taking. I want to pass pharm so I can progress to third semester but I am not grasping any of the material and the instructor doesn't help. Has anybody had success with ATI Pharm?? Stress levels are high because of the high stakes everything and I'm feeling overwhelmed.

[AliNajaCat]

There are other textbooks for this purpose available. I'm not a current student so I'm not in a position to give you a specific reference, but I'll bet others can chime in to recommend their good ones.

This is one more problem with online courses. You end up teaching yourself, but paying them.

Good luck.

[bellini]

Not familiar with ATI Pharmacology Made Easy, but anything with "Easy", or "Simple" or "Fun" in the title is suspect. Learning hard things is hard. Learning boring things is boring. Lippincott's Illustrated Review of Pharmacology is good: complete, clear, nicely illustrated. If you want really in-depth information, Goodman and Gilman's text is the one.

[ireyes98]

You can endlessly study for pharmacology, there's a whole career on it. As a nurse, you should be okay with what they are teaching you in class but it's always good to have good resources to help you along the way if your pharm course is not really helping you out. I made an app, it contains drug classes, drugs associated with the classes (generic and brand name because NCLEX only uses generic names), and all of the information school, clinicals, and the NCLEX required me to know such as MOA's, vitals, labs, common/severe side effects and nursing considerations to watch for. Check it out, its free, it's on the app stores or through our website nclexessentials.barcalabs.com. Good luck. I just passed my nclex last year and this guide is all I studied to prep for pharm.

[LJR89]

My school used ATI and also Pharmacology: A Patient Centered Nursing-Process Approach (Kee)

And surprisingly enough I liked it a lot. I wouldn't suggest dropping a lot of money on it, but if you can find it for cheap it might be worth a look, because I thought it did a decent job of explaining both the drugs and the pathophys they are treating in normal human words.

to study for exams I would first read the section on the drug in my text book (short sections about 5 minutes per drug to read), compare it to ATI while fast forwarding through the module. And then glance at my Davis DrugGuide and Mosbeys Flash cards. My whole process Was admittedly time consuming, but pharm became one of my strongest subjects!