Teaching Pharm-I need your input

Powerpoints helped me alot. We were able to print them off the school website and then add our own notes to them. It helped condense things into an easier to study format.

Good luck with your teaching! :)

Powerpoints helped me alot. We were able to print them off the school website and then add our own notes to them. It helped condense things into an easier to study format.

Good luck with your teaching! :)

:yeahthat: :yeahthat:

Power points were a life saver. We would get them before class and follow along, had areas to make notes on the sides.

I took Pharm last semester. My teacher was great. She gave examples of drugs from T.V. commercials, she used personal stories, she used powerpoints. The book was EXCELLENT. "Pharmacology for nursing care" by Lehne, elsevier/saunders. She gave extra credit if we memorized important charts in the book and other important things. We had 4 tests, and a comprehensive final. She made sure we knew what we would be tested on a few days before each test---

I loved pharm for a couple of reasons:

My professor really grouped things well and taught what was different about certain meds. So, for example, with cardiac meds he'd just briefly indicate the same effects of beta blockers and calcium channel blockers but he'd explain in detail what made them different. He was also really great about teaching tricks so that if you didn't recognize the specific name of a drug you might be able to identify the class by the name - like beta blockers ending in "lol".

There's my 2 cents - grouping, focusing on what's different, and hints for recognizing med classes based on the drug name.

Oh...he also made us make drug cards for pretty much every med - both names, classification, usual dosage, MOA, desired effect, and major SE's. I've used these same drug cards throughout nursing school and they've been great.

Good luck,

Amanda

Well, some instructors lecture on stuff that is not going to be on the test...If you can lecture about stuff that is going to be on the test plus things that are not going to be on the test, that would be fine..Present your information in a broad form covering a lot of areas..Also, on the exams, make a small percentage of stuff that you did not cover so you know the students are reading the book also..

I agree that Powerpoint lectures available as handout downloads were very helpful. If you have control over the text used, I think a well written book makes a difference as well. We used Pharmacology and the Nursing Process published by Mosby, which has a study guide that accompanies it, which assisted by narrowing my attention to the key information.

Perhaps most helpful of all for me was a list of learning objectives the instructor gave us for each chapter, which I used to create my own study sheets (including info from both lecture notes and the text). That strategy seems to work best for me regardless of the class...

Having powerpoint slides to follow along with is very helpful IF the lecturer actually follows them. There've been times when we've gotten them to follow along with, but the lecturer doesn't follow them, and then...what's the use?

At the same time, it also bugs me when the instructors just read off of the Power Point (we may as well take it and read it at home!) Having just the basic info on Power Point and then lecturing off of that is so much more helpful...

Using a lot of pictures is always a good idea for use visual thinkers... (diagrams of how processes work) and examples are great for making sure people remember side effects, etc. of drugs...

I guess I'd just say...do your best to make it interesting and organized. Most of all, make sure your students know that you're avaliable for questions. Having an approachable teacher makes all the difference.

Ah ... a chance to actually make suggestions to a teacher ...

These are general suggestions but would eliminate a lot problems for students:

1) Please be organized. If you tell us that something is not going to be on a test then please make a note of it somewhere and don't forget what you told us. There's nothing worse than seeing something you told us not to study ... on a test. And, on the flip side, if we need to study something ... tell us. We can't read your mind. For some reason many teachers expect you to know things that are not mentioned in lecture or in the assigned reading material.

2) Read the textbook and make sure you're reading the same edition we're reading. Too often the teachers base their test equestions on some old version of a textbook when we can only buy the new version where key material has changed ... or has been omitted all together.

3) If you're teaching pharm chances are it's first semester students who have no clue what nursing critical thinking questions are like. Recommend NCLEX guides or other critical thinking practice questions to help them along. Too many teachers don't give us any instruction with critical thinking at all ... they just expect you to figure it out after the test.

4) If you assign more than one source of reading material, try to realize that different textbooks tell us different things. Three different textbooks can easily give you three different answers to the same question. If there is conflicting information, tell us what book we should rely upon for test questions.

5) If you're going to use test banks or questions from other sources that are not from our textbooks, please be aware that the conflicting information problem occurs here also. Our textbook can easily say something different than what a test bank compiled from other sources says. It's incredibly frustrating.

If you could do this then ... it would be wonderful.

:typing

Ah ... a chance to actually make suggestions to a teacher ...

Nice, isn't it? Jackmac, I think you're off to a great start. It wouldn't even dawn on most new instructors to solicit the type of feedback that you have.

A BIG thank you to all of you for your input. I am finding it very helpful. Keep it coming.

Thanks!!!

I guess what I appreciated most about my pharmacology professor was the way she tried to make the information relevant and understandable. She used examples from real life and focused more on the general classes of drugs rather than specific names. Though we had to know some specific drugs for the exams, the focus was more on critical thinking, for instance knowing when to hold a drug and when to give it.

She emphasized life-long learning, because as she pointed out there will be hundreds of new drugs coming out in the next five to ten years.

She also reminded to us that we should always have a drug reference handy and not be afraid to look things up, because even she has to do this if she isn't 100% certain about a medication.

All of my classmates and I now carry our drug handbooks with us on the unit during clinicals, and we aren't afraid to call the pharmacist with a question if we can't find the answer in any book. Some of the other student nurses I see at the hospital do not do this!

Most of all, let the students know that you are genuinely there to support their learning. If they feel that you are approachable, this will go a long way towards preventing the high level of frustration that students seem to have with many instructors/professors.