Tips Learning Drugs?

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Specializes in Cardiac Telemetry, Psychology.

I think I am having the most difficulty learning the pharm aspect of the test. I have been told the best way is to learn by drug class, not really by individual drugs. I just don't know how to tell if an individual drug is part of a class easily or not!

Any tips, websites, etc. to help?

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Specializes in Community Health, Med-Surg, Home Health.
I think I am having the most difficulty learning the pharm aspect of the test. I have been told the best way is to learn by drug class, not really by individual drugs. I just don't know how to tell if an individual drug is part of a class easily or not!

Any tips, websites, etc. to help?

Consider purchasing Helen Feuer's Nursing Review. Type the name into your browser. They have pharmacology CDs that really give nice hints with the suffixes of the name of the drugs, such as the 'olol's are beta blockers, the 'prils' are ACE inhibitors.

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Specializes in Cardiac Telemetry, Psychology.
Consider purchasing Helen Feuer's Nursing Review. Type the name into your browser. They have pharmacology CDs that really give nice hints with the suffixes of the name of the drugs, such as the 'olol's are beta blockers, the 'prils' are ACE inhibitors.

I thought about doing something like that, but I am only down to 12 days left before my big test. I guess I will suffer through the back of the Kaplan book. They just don't have any "easy" memorization tools like what you suggested. Ohhh well..

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Even if you have only a few days, get the mosby pharm flash cards. It shows visual and meumonic ways for drugs

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Specializes in Community Health, Med-Surg, Home Health.
I thought about doing something like that, but I am only down to 12 days left before my big test. I guess I will suffer through the back of the Kaplan book. They just don't have any "easy" memorization tools like what you suggested. Ohhh well..

Well, if it is any consolation to you, most people, including myself, don't know most of the drugs that show up on NCLEX, anyway. I got about 10 drugs, and didn't know about 4. Even with the CD, but I guessed really good on one of them, because when I looked it up when I got home, I saw that I had made a great educated guess and got lucky. With 12 days before the exam, I just say to study drugs that relate to the common disease entities. Good luck to you...I KNOW how you are feeling.

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