rxrunner

Beth, This is a timely post, I'm a pharmacist who teaches at a nursing school. I'm at AWP in Los Angeles this weekend (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) with 12,000 other writers and I'll share my own writing path as a reply to those who are thinking about it. I always battled the wanting to write vs. wanting to have a job, so my undergraduate major started as chemistry, then finished pharmacy school (we don't need a bachelor's) then went back and graduated with my English degree 21 years after I started college, but there were fits and starts where I wrote for Arizona State University's newspaper The State Press, I was always helping other people with their writing, then I got a job where I could take free undergrad classes and just finally finished that humanities degree. It wasn't until my daughters (triplets) were born, that I needed to write, it was touch and go so often with their 13 week early premature birthsday, that writing allowed me to really express how I felt in the NICU. I think Lee Gutkind is here at around noon tomorrow who will be presenting some health care writers, I think he edited the I wasn't strong like this when I started out anthology.Anyway, I wanted to clarify the types of writing. A post already mentioned fiction, but creative non-fiction is writing nonfiction, but in an engaging way, but the freelance writing you seem to be talking about is the kind of stuff freelancers on Upwork do and the specialized medical knowledge you have as nurses really commands a bit of a premium. Anyway, long story short, instead of freelance writing, I do DIY writing and employ freelance editors like you guys to make sure my work has as few a mistakes as possible. It has allowed me to put my own book Memorizing Pharmacology together for my students, it's free for anyone who has Amazon Kindle unlimited or Amazon prime without having to deal with hoping an agent will like me / my work , etc. It's kind of unfair to have pharm without organic chem in many ways and my book takes a humane approach to the topic. I'm working on finishing the free videos for it, I'm TonyPharmD on YouTube, but I think if you're going to be a paid writer, as some have posted, you just go to go into the core of what it means to be a health professional, to be of service to others and as Beth said, you'll find plenty of people who want that service. I paid $900 to the freelancers who edited and proofed my book and the voice talent who will record and master the audiobook will get $400 pfh. So, it's a good gig, I think.

I think pharmacy tech has the most opportunities to move into a job you might actually stay with for quite a while as well now that they do Med Rec in hospitals.

I put up a 70 minute video with the Over the Counter meds that makes it easier to learn the RX ones. It might help for kinesthetic learners or for international students.

I teach in a Pharm Tech program and we have many pre-nursing students get their Pharm Tech certification while they are on the wait list. They say it really helps with pharmacology and medications, but also that they have a good understanding of how the pharmacy department can help them. I also agree with another person who posted "learn pharmacology," but that's not always the easiest thing to learn on your own. That could be a $15 book. Someone put that there are no jobs for pharm techs, but they are actually in demand for many positions, especially in medication reconciliation, previously given to nurses. It's a good time to be a Pharm Tech, their roles are expanding, not really a great time to be a pharmacist job wise.

There's never a good time to do nursing school and there's never a good time to have kids! I can tell you that my sister in law got married just after nursing school and it's like she played a country music record backwards, she was so happy again, just as a person, she got her life back, her dog back, her husband back, and her truck back. (well, her life and husband, but you get the idea). There's an expression, you learn how to be a nurse once you leave nursing school, I'd say finish what you started, quitting will make it tough for you to ever let go of "what if," but once you finish, you'll have many options as another person commented, a nurse with a passion for psych and a background that way is very valuable. It's tough to see past some of the entry level opportunities, bu there are some really cool jobs out there that people with nursing degrees do, but you might not call it a nursing job. You've got a supportive spouse, that's huge.

There are a few errors in there that I want to respectfully correct.my comments are in parenthesis. -ase = thrombolytic (-ase means enzyme, while all thrombolytics end in -ase, that doesn't mean all drugs that end in -ase are thrombolytics, i.e. be careful running into a brand name like Flonase = nasal steroid and applying this rule, it's only for generics. -azepam = benzodiazepine (also -azolam) -azine = antiemetic; phenothiazide (it's phenothiazine, this is important because the endings of prochlorperazine and promethazine end in -azine, not -thiazide which is a class of diuretic.) -azole = proton pump inhibitor, antifungal (no, this is a common misunderstanding, an azole is just a type of organic chemistry functional group, the PPI ending is -prazole, the anti fungal ending is -conazole) -barbital = barbiturate (it's actually just "barb" for barbituric acid derivatives) -coxib = cox 2 enzyme blockers -cep/-cef = anti-infectives (these are prefixes, so the dash should be to the left, the prefix ceph- is archaic and no longer used, the cef- is the correct new stem for cephalosporin class antibiotics) -caine = anesthetics (well, local anesthetics) -cillin = penicillin -cycline = antibiotic (tetracycline class antibiotics) -dipine = calcium channel blocker (dihydropyridine CCBs like nifedipine and amlodipine which just vasodilator, the ending doesn't work for diltiazem and verapamil, the non-dihydropyridines) -floxacin = antibiotic (fluoroquinolone antibiotics the -fl- is an infix indicating a fluorine atom and the -oxacin = quinolone antibiotic) -ipramine = tricyclic antidepressant -ine = reverse transcriptase inhibitors, antihistamines (absolutely do not use "-ine" as a short-cut or heuristic, 20% of all drugs end in "-ine" i.e. morphine, fluoxetine, chlorpromazine, an opioid, SSRI, and antipsychotic respectively. Use the entire stem, i.e. -atadine for loratadine (Claritin) or -tidine for (famotidine) and H2 blocker. -kinase = thrombolytics -lone, pred- = corticosteroid (pred is an official stem, -lone is not, be careful with that one. -mab = monoclonal antibiotics -micin = antibiotic, aminoglycoside (this is another misconception, the -micin just means that the antibacterial came from the Micromonospora strain if it was -mycin it would come from the Streptomyces strain. All -micin and -mycin really tell you is it might be an antibiotic, but bleomycin is an anti-cancer drug, so it really doesn't always work. -navir = protease inhibitor nitr-, -nitr- = nitrate/vasodilator -olol = beta antagonist -oxin = cardiac glycoside (careful with this one, better to just memorize digoxin/digitoxin) -osin = alpha blocker (too short, it's -azosin as in terazosin, doxazosin) -parin = anticoagulant (warfarin's an oral anticoagulant, heparin is a parenteral anticoagulant so careful with this) -prazole = ppi's (PPIs) -phylline = bronchodilator (methylxanthine) -pril = ace inhibitor -statin = cholesterol lowering agent (careful, nystatin is an anti fungal, better to go with -vastatin) -sartan = angiotensin ii blocker (Angiotensin II Receptor Blocker ARB) -sone = glucocorticoid, corticosteroid (not official, but usually works, also see just -son- as in budesonide) -stigmine = cholinergics (an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, blocks breakdown of ACh to provide cholinergic effect) -terol = beta 2 agonist -thiazide = diuretic (like hydrochlorthiazide) -tidine = antiulcer (H2 blocker) -trophin = pituitary hormone (???) -vir = anti-viral, protease inhibitors (vir is the parent stem for antivirals, others like navir are sub stems and that one means protease inhibitors) -zosin = alpha 1 antagonist (-azosin) -zolam = benzo/sedative (-azolam) -zine = antihistamine (no, hydrazine is a vasodilator) I think it's good to try to learn prefixes, infixes, suffixes, but make sure they come from the AMA Stem List or the WHO Stem Book. I wrote a book called Memorizing Pharmacology: A Relaxed Approach that tries to clear this confusion up.

I have taught pharmacology at a nursing school for six years and I understand your frustration. It's something called the "Curse of Knowledge" where an instructor can't understand why a student doesn't get it, because they have been teaching so long. Instructors often don't know how much is enough or too much to give students, I wrote a book about the problem and provided a solution. You can get a free view of my explanation on Amazon.com or Lulu.com under Memorizing Pharmacology: A Relaxed Approach. I'm also TonyPharmD and have a bunch of free pronunciation videos on YouTube.com from an old edition.

You can find a lot of pharmacology information online. I put up 8 videos for my students, thought the Drug Names Decoded book will be gone this fall, I wrote another one called "A Little Pharmacology Paperback". If you learn the drug names, you are in good shape.

I created 8 free videos on drug pronunciation that you can listen to on YouTube for free just type in Drug Names Decoded. I just finished writing the next edition of the book that goes with it called "A Little Pharmacology Paperback", it's really more meant for students as a "Pre-Pharmacology" or "Co-Pharmacology" book so you learn the drug names before you get into class. I read that you can't memorize all the drugs, and that's true, there are 13,000 of them, but you can memorize 175 that will be foundational for most of the other ones. My students are super impressed with themselves at the end of term when they see 100% on that part of the exam.