Pharmacology

[mebamy]

I'm in my first semester of LVN school, just finishing up Med Admin which I did okay in and now it's time to learn the drugs. We were given a list of about 110 drugs and told that by January we would be expected to know by heart the drugs' brand and generic names, drug classification, usual dose, acceptable routes, priority nursing implications, indications for use/expected effect of med, common side effects/potential adverse reactions, contraindications, and teaching concerns. And all they gave us was a list of the drugs names. I know these are vital things we need to know but there's SO much info out there for each one I don't even know where to begin! I am not very good with memorization and am more of a visual learner so I've gotten by pretty well with flash cards but this is way too much info to fit on a card! I'm so overwhelmed I am just trying to figure out how to approach it!

Any tips or pointers would be appreciated! :)

[undertakeress]

Try to learn mnemonic devices or traits among the drugs. Like most ACE Inhibitors end in "pril", most Beta Blockers end in "olol".

Good luck!

[dani_girl]

WOOH!.. that is a bunch! First I would group them by type.. like your Beta blockers, Cardiac meds, ect.. and first learn their name and category.. because once you know things by name and group.. like "propanalol" is a Beta blocker, you will start to group the things that are the same for that category together instead of memorizing each drug by itself.. does this make sense?? (I am running on empty here..) so when you get another beta blocker like metoprolol if you don't remember it, you can think "well its a BB so I would check BP and heart rate.. ect"

Also you will begin to learn hints.. like alot of beta blockers end in "olol"

good luck

[iteachob, MSN, RN]

Usual dose of 110 drugs?? Wow....just wow!

I teach this stuff, and I don't think I know the usual DOSE of 110 drugs. The other stuff, yeah, but usual dose?