Pharmacology!

Published

I am set to take the NCLEX in exactly one week. And I am FREAKED out by the fact that I am going to fail because I so struggle with pharmacology. I am doing Kaplan and practice questions, but it floors me that they will take some random drug and ask me if it should be taken before meals, with meals, before bed, with orange juice . . . seriously? Do you know how many drugs there are? How am I supposed to know this? Yes, I know the major drugs - Dig, Lasix, Lithium, Morphine, etc. I know "olol" drugs are beta blockers and "enzos" are benzos. Anyway, to my question.

For those who have taken the NCLEX - how much pharmacology did you get? I know it's different for everyone, but can I get a clue?

All others - any tips? I only have one week, and I'm not inclined to postpone, in fact I can't wait to get it over with :mad:.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

A friend of mine took NCLEX last week ... she had 4 pharm questions and she said she never heard of any of them. She was an LPN for 3 years before doing the bridge program. She did not study extensively and did not review any pharm at all.

She passed with 75 questions.

I'm just reviewing what we learned in class. Going over study guides, etc. I have one of the pharm books from Kaplan but it looks like it just consists of the major drugs we should already be familiar with.

Good luck. I test July 8th

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in skilled nursing LTC.

you can't study every single drug and remember all there side effects, interactions etc..its impossible. when i took my nclex i got about 4 pharmacology questions all the same drug. it was a potassium sparing diuretic but i can't remember the name now, of course. i didn't recognize it at first so i took a guess. then a few more questions later i got the same drug again asking about if the patient should eat bananas or some other food choices. i started to think about the context of the questions that were related to this drug and took a logical guess. i was very concerned that i failed but i got 85 questions and passed. so try not to freak out just take your time and any bits of information that you can remember about a drug even if its not one that you studied that much should come to you and help you get through it.

good luck

Up Vote Up Vote ×

I had about 4-5 pharmacology questions. I dealt with my pharmacology anxiety by doing the saunders cd and doing the study mode with content area only pharmacology. It's amazing how much you can learn practicing those questions and reading the rationales. I think I did about 200 pharm questions before I took the NCLEX. You also get some practice ruling out like answers and things...

Up Vote Up Vote ×

heres some hints that i have seen. Take anything that deals with iron with orange juice. Orange juice helps absorb iron pills... tetracycline drugs need to be taken on an empty stomach

as for any questions you get and have NO CLUE on , i ususally put "take with meal" seems like a lot meds are taken that way. decreases gastric upset...

thats my advice lol i may not have helped much

Up Vote Up Vote ×

I only had two and one was one I heard of and the other wasn't. It varies just like everything on the test. I took the test 5x and got questions on traction. What do I do, study anything and everything about traction, next test, not a one on that. You're going to get a mixture of everything.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Join the Discussion