Pharmacology question for CRNA's and SRNA's

gaspassah · Jan 10, 2004

well this works for me. instead of buying flash cards, write them yourself. this gives you an opportunity to see yourself when writing it, then study them. other than that it's not much else you can do.

now the question i have is, could it be that he know the information but is having a hard time when he's put on the spot. there is a difference answering a question on a test, and having to answer someone who is looking at you going well.......

it may be he has a confidence problem. that is what usually gets me, i'm know the answer but may sometimes lack the confidence to state the answer with authority for fear of being wrong,

hope this helps.

d

sweetdreams · Jan 10, 2004

One book your husband may want to check into is "Anesthesia Secrets" by James Duke. I bought my copy from amazon.com. One of the senior students in my program said that quite a few of the pimping questions came from it. This book gives concise overviews of the drug classes, not so much dosages, but mechcanism of action and general class properties. I've found that learning drugs first from the general properties and then moving on to the individual specific properties is helpful for me.

I am walking in your husband's shoes and having the same experience. In talking to classmates I think its normal. Just as admission committees like to see sweat and anxiety, I think clinical instructors like a little of the same. What I've done is go through the common drugs in the OR, narcs, muscle relaxants, reversals, etc. and as gaspassah said write out my own flashcards. It seems to help to write them yourself. I'm also having the aforementined confidence problem with my answers, knowing but not sure of it.

Tell him to hang in there. He's not alone

WntrMute2 · Jan 10, 2004

Tell him to hang in there. It is realativly to remember during the calm during a test but much harder when someone says " pull out 6 drugs out of this drawer that improve perfusion" NOW. Eventually, It'll come as he uses them. My first 2 semesters of pharm i thought I'd never remember the alphas from the betas but now, most of it is second nature. Some one once said "What kills them is not the alphas or the betas but the lack of the little green Os."

7 Days till boards, what am i doing on this board I'll never know!

Passin' Gas · Jan 10, 2004

Good luck on boards! Quit studying the day before, if you don't know it by now, you won't know it during the exam. Get a good night's sleep. That will do more for memory and retention than sitting up until the wee hours of the morning poring over % cardoac output to the spleen!

It's been a LONG and HARD road to this point but it is surely sweet getting those four letters after your name: CRNA

Good luck to you and everyone else in this exam period!!

PG

Pooh Bear Girl · Jan 10, 2004

Thanks to all who replied! I think my husbands problem is that he gets nervous and has a hard time being Johnny on the spot. I took his drug book and asked him several questions from it and he got all of them right without hesitation...........but it's much much different if the head of the CRNA program is grilling him. He's all done with classes now and his overall GPA for the program was 3.7. He is doing fine with clinicals except for some of the grilling that they do. The director informed him that he is not on probation but he is being watched to see if he really knows the drugs. I know he does and as I type this he's pouring over his drug book. I think it might really help him to write out the flash cards and first master the drugs and their function. Then he can concentrate on the nit picky stuff. I was going to offer to write it up for him but I think it's much better that he does it. I just want to help him as much as possible. Thanks again for your responses! It's nice to know we're not alone.:)

nilepoc · Jan 10, 2004

I personally can relate very well to your husbands situation. I ended my blog for this reason, and have been focusing heavily on pharmacology. I know the material, but I am not the best at articulating it, when challenged.

I made a file of my own flash cards in a word file, and have been reading several books in order to get the content and assimilate it into a cohessive body of knowlegde.

good luck.