Pharmacology Preview?!!!

shirley123amos · May 21, 2012

Hey Tammy, I was to nervous at the orientation to try and find any of the allnurses students from on here! lol I was the girl with long brown hair and a purple shirt in the front row center (like im sure you will remember!!) Anyways, I would love to get a head start as well and be prepared for all of these nursing classes. I am going to check out that Davis drug guide as it sounds pretty good. I also read your other post about getting hired with a ADN...im really hoping to get a job right out of this program, but im also planning on starting the RN-BSN degree completion program fall of 2014 just in case! If you ever want to talk about the program let me know!! My name is Shannon by the way

IndyElmer · May 21, 2012

My pharmacology lectures didn't spend much time going over why/how things were working or why/how a nurse was going to d this or that. Probably 60-75% of the time, it felt like my instructor was reading lists of "stuff" from a drug guide to us.

Here's what I mean by stuff. This is what we had to learn for each drug:

Therapeutic Drug class

Pharmacologic drug class

Generic name

Trade (Brand) name

Mechanism of action

Administration (routes, dosages, compatibility with food or IV solutions)

Side & Adverse effects

Nursing interventions

Patient teachings

Contraindications

Precautions

Interactions (with other drugs and with foods)

The good thing about her "reading lists" to us is that she definitely was NOT reading every single item that was in each of these sections of our textbook. If there were 12 side effects listed in the text, she might discuss 3 with some detail and mention 4 others more briefly.

Our instructor recommended that we learn the prototype for each drug class [e.g. furosemide (Lasix) is listed as the prototype for the loop diuretic pharmacologic drug class which is under the therapeutic drug class of "diurectics"]. Then we could learn other drugs in the same class based on how they were different from the prototype. NOTE: different texts list different drugs as the "prototype."

However, as a preview, you could consider going over the intro chapters of your textbook or start becoming familiar with the information from the above list that is "common" to each of the drug classes like the ones you listed (anticoagulant, antihistamine, etc.). (I know that some sets of drug cards have a card for each drug class, but since I decided to postpone my Davis purchase until June when the 2012 edition comes out, I don't know if the book also has pages with general info for each class.) The intro chapters will have stuff like pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, nursing management of drugs, drug side/adverse affects, and info on how the lifespan (childhood, pregnancy, old-age) affect the way we process drugs, etc.

If you want to skip right to learning some drugs so you can try to develop your own "system" for memorizing drugs, there are a number of ways to choose a few to practice on. **You could start learning some of the prototypes from your textbook. **Or, you can look up the 2010 top 200 prescription drugs (by # of scripts, not by $ sales) and learn some of those. (The 2010 list came out in May 2011 so I suspect the 2011 list will come out any day now, but I didn't see it when I googled it last week.) **Or, you can choose some off of Kaplan's "top 300 NCLEX drugs" (which you can see by finding the Kaplan NCLEX drug cards on Amazon then using the "look inside" feature to see the list).

Overall, I probably wouldn't advocate getting a jumpstart, but I certainly understand the inclination, so I've offered some options for ways that you could jumpstart.

Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN · May 21, 2012

https://allnurses.com/pharmacology-flashcards-drug-cards-t394218/

tammy_zeidan09 · May 21, 2012

Oh my! Thank you ladies so much for your replies! I'll definitely be previewing. I will probably be lost beyond myself trying to understand the vocab and processes..! Worth a shot!

Thanks again! =]

IndyElmer · May 21, 2012

I'm pretty sure the ATI flashcards are for the drugs that ATI deems to be prototypes. A lot of them matched my text, but not all, and my instructor often didn't focus on prototypes at all - yay!

tammy_zeidan09 · May 21, 2012

Prototypes???!!

IndyElmer · May 22, 2012

This is not a technical definition, but here's how I think of pharmacology prototypes: "best" example for each drug class.

In my textbook, for each drug class, there is a prototype then a list of drugs that very similar (think Viagra, Cialis, Levitra) as well as a list of drugs in the class that are "not similar" to the prototype. The text describes the prototype in excruciating detail, but for the "similar" drugs, it gives fairly brief "here's how each of these drugs is different." And for those in the class that are determined by the author to be "not similar," there's a more lengthy description of the differences.

Basically, it's a way for them to not have to describe EVERY drug in detail. Once you learn the details for the prototype (Viagra), you can just learn the few ways that Cialis or Levitra is different rather than memorizing huge lists of details for all three drugs.

tammy_zeidan09 · May 22, 2012

This is not a technical definition, but here's how I think of pharmacology prototypes: "best" example for each drug class.
In my textbook, for each drug class, there is a prototype then a list of drugs that very similar (think Viagra, Cialis, Levitra) as well as a list of drugs in the class that are "not similar" to the prototype. The text describes the prototype in excruciating detail, but for the "similar" drugs, it gives fairly brief "here's how each of these drugs is different." And for those in the class that are determined by the author to be "not similar," there's a more lengthy description of the differences.
Basically, it's a way for them to not have to describe EVERY drug in detail. Once you learn the details for the prototype (Viagra), you can just learn the few ways that Cialis or Levitra is different rather than memorizing huge lists of details for all three drugs.

oh okay! gotchya!

Thanks for that!

=]