Pharmacology -- help?

anonymousstudent · Jan 13, 2012

I find that time doesn't matter much in studying. You'll see people who spend "hours and hours" and still do poorly.

You have to figure out HOW TO STUDY. Effectively.

Pharm was never hard for me, and I am terrible at memorizing things. I learned drugs in groupings, and then I would focus on learning what was similar about all of them. Then it's easy to spot the random differences. You also need to know what you would teach a patient about a drug, and how it can kill somebody, adverse side effects, etc.

Pharm is really important. When you get into your program and are at clinical looking at a list of 20 drugs that you have to know inside and out in 10 minutes when your CI is coming to quiz you, you will be very thankful you learned the material in this course, not just memorized it.

ExodusPaige66 · Jan 13, 2012

Thats what I'm thinking, learning it and not just memorizing it. I have tried understandind the concepts as a whole class, and knowing which drugs belong to which class and what their mechanism of action is and adverse effects, ect. I feel like I keep changing my study methods and nothing I do works. Its really the exams that kill me, they are worth 90% of our grade and I'm a horrible test-taker. Maybe I should focus more on test skills :-/ Thank you so much for your thoughts!

Cindy Samborski · Jan 14, 2012

There are three ways we learn, tactile, auditory and visual. You can search these 3 terms to learn more about them and take a simple test which shows you how you learn best. You may not be optimizing your learning by reading if you are a visual learner. Finding your style will improve your learning. I had a mixture of styles and one of the best ways I would learn things was setting up a mock classroom with a chalkboard and I would teach the material (essentially to no one), but this was the way I learned best. Don't get frustrated, look into this a little further! Good Luck. Cindy Samborski RN, MSN, MHA

SunshineDaisy, ASN, RN · Jan 14, 2012

I ditto the above posters! You have to find out how you study best! Also, one thing that helped me is to remember the sympathetic and parasympathetic responses. every drug is affected by one of those responses. If you can remember them and the side affects you can remember the side affects of the drugs too!

nurseprnRN, BSN, RN · Jan 14, 2012

i keep going back to physiology-- if people didn't have alterations in their physiology they wouldn't be sick and in the hospital and we wouldn't have to worry about them.

when you learn about a med, you have to pay attention to the why of it, what part of physiology (human and microbial) does it alter/stop/goose/replace/work with? when you have that, you have it all, and the rest is just getting used to the amounts.

ExodusPaige66 · Jan 17, 2012

You guys have helped me wonderfully! Thank you so much!!!

jemmens · Jan 21, 2012

what pharm text are you using? I will suggest you do the practice test in the test. What really helped me in pharm was the notes I got in class. does the instructor give notes, if not maybe I can share some of my notes with you.