Suggestions for pharmacology?

I am starting my BSN in the fall of 05. I will be taking pharmacology among other things. I was wondering if anyone has suggestions of books I should buy to get a head start? I hear that pharm. is difficult and would love to start early. Also I read other posts and they say to learn the most common drugs. What are the most common drugs that I should learn or where can I find a list of them from? Thanks in advance!

[mavnurse]

I wish I could help but I remember pharm as being something you can't really prep ahead of time for. You kinda have to take it as it comes. Anyone else feel this way?

[mitchsmom]

I used Dosage Calculations Made Incredibly Easy to brush up on my math before pharm. It goes through the different methods and you can chose the one that works for your brain. We used Pharmacology: A Nursing Process Approach by Kee & Hayes for our text in class. I always hear that the best way to study drugs is to learn the characteristics of the family/class of drugs as a whole since it's so hard to remember every little fact about every drug, especially in the beginning.

A set of 'common drug' cards, a good bit of my class notes, plus a bunch of other pharmacology files and links are here if you are interested:

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/allnursesstudents/

Mavnurse... I don't know, I think you can read ahead if you have a text... I find it easier to grasp without a teacher/clinicals than, say, patho. It is probably much easier when you are actually using them and seeing them in charts, etc. though (I am part-time and had to take my pharm class before beginning clinicals).

[jenrninmi, MSN, RN]

I am starting my BSN in the fall of 05. I will be taking pharmacology among other things. I was wondering if anyone has suggestions of books I should buy to get a head start? I hear that pharm. is difficult and would love to start early. Also I read other posts and they say to learn the most common drugs. What are tghe most common drugs that I sould learn or where can I find a list of them from? Thank in advance!

Hi there, someone posted this website before... http://www.studystack.com/java-studysta/frames.jsp

I haven't looked it over yet, but give it a try! Good luck!

[Jsholmes]

I am starting my BSN in the fall of 05. I will be taking pharmacology among other things. I was wondering if anyone has suggestions of books I should buy to get a head start? I hear that pharm. is difficult and would love to start early. Also I read other posts and they say to learn the most common drugs. What are tghe most common drugs that I sould learn or where can I find a list of them from? Thank in advance!

I just finished pharm this last semster and it is the one class I had to study the most in. It's all about memorization! A suggestion that may help is to know the classes of each drug and know what the class do. For example, beta blockers slow the heart rate and must beta blocking drugs end with -lol. Also must ace- inhibitors (an antihypertensive) drugs ends with -ine. Grouping and recognizing drugs like this helped me out a lot. It's extremely hard to memorized every single drug but knowing the group the drug my fall in helps out a lot!