Pharmacology - how hard is it?

Nursing Students LPN/LVN Students

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I have pharm next semester and was wondering exactly how hard this course will be. Not the best at math AT ALL.

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Specializes in Trauma | Surgical ICU.

If you have a good grasp of Anatomy, Physiology & chemistry, you'll do fine.

It's not really hard. Pharmacology is more about understanding how the medications affect the body in good and bad ways. The most important thing a nurse should note about pharmacology is how are you, as a nurse, will assess the effectiveness or lack thereof the medication.

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Specializes in Geriatrics, rehab, Alzheimers.

Pharmacology sounds a lot harder than it actually is. You mainly learn drug classes, and a few COMMON meds and just know what normal side effects are VS side effects that could potentially kill your patient. I got this real neat drug flip book from a friend and it lists all drug classes and has little cartoons to help you remember what to look for. I would suggest something like that to help you remember. You will notice also a lot of the meds end in the same manner....for example, beta blockers end in OLOL and ACE inhibitors end in pril...usually the questions on test always lead you to the class of drug, so as long as you know that your golden....good luck

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Specializes in ICU / PCU / Telemetry / Oncology.

Pharm is a nightmare. It's the course I hated the most in nursing school. I learned more about pharm working on the unit.

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Specializes in 1.

Just try to do a little everyday and don't get behind. When it comes to pharm it is best to know the teachings for the major classifications of drugs as well as nursing interventions before or after.

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You can start memorizing the top 200 drugs now. Google pharmacy-tech-study it is a website with a ton of videos, and helpful hints.

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I started Pharm in February, and the only thing we are doing is conversions and dosage/calculations problems. We are also in the lab learning how to draw insulin, give injections and the different injection sites. We haven't opened our book yet.

Here are a few examples:

Conversions

1L=1000mL

5mL=1tsp

3tsp=1T

1kg=2.2 lbs

Every program is set to a different pace. Please do not freak out or become overwhelmed before you start. Im sure you will do fine. I suck at math(It has always been a weakness and on top of that I make careless mathematical errors) ,but so far I have passed all of my tests. We have to have an 80 or above in order to move on to the second semester. If you can do basic math: Add, Subtract, Divide and Multiply,(And think critically) you will survive Pharm.

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Specializes in Psych, LTC/SNF, Rehab, Corrections.

Pharm's not hard.

Most students just have crappy instructors.

(myself included)

She was just like, 'Oh...here's a packet of random meds'.

That's not a good way to learn your meds.

You should learn by system. You should group and look for similarities, e.g., prefix/suffix, some classes do all of one thing,etc...blah, blah, blah.

I know my meds because I taught myself.

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Pharmacology is pure memorization once u can master that u will be fine. Got an A and level three in ati proctored from just

Memorization big thing a lot of drugs have similar side effects remember the most uncommon among the drugs and for all that apply almost every drug have some form of gi upset

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Two students in the calss before us who just took their nclex stopped in to tell the teachers Hi and that they passed the test (one passed, one didn't) and they just told us that the nclex only gave drug trade/brand names, not chemical/generic names on the test. It made me very depressed because I have been learning drug classes and suffexes like lol, pril, pine, etc, and the trade names are all different- no way to get a grasp on that! Anyone know anything about this???

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Specializes in General ICU.

Pharmacology is not hard only if you are good with memorization!

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I have pharm next semester and was wondering exactly how hard this course will be. Not the best at math AT ALL.

Pharm is not easy because there are sooo many meds, so many similar side effects, its just something you have to put extra studying time into- but not impossible.

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