The Best Pharmacology Study Tips For Nursing Students

Are you worried about all the meds you need to learn in nursing school? I totally get it. There are a lot and it could be really overwhelming. So in this video, I'm going to break down the best strategies for learning pharm faster and easier in nursing school. Let's dive in. So tip number one for passing pharmacology is to not freak out when you get your entire medication list. This is very easy to do, especially when your school gives you all these medications to learn or when you go to a clinical floor and your patient is on like 30 or 50 medications and there is just a lot to know with that single patient on top of all the other patients that you have as well. So it can be very overwhelming when you are faced with so many medications to learn all at once. But here's the thing, if you're stressed about it, it's going to be a lot more difficult for you to learn the information that you need to learn. If your brain is freaking out, you're not going to be focused, right? You're not going to be productive, you're not going to be as efficient at studying as would be if you were calm and relaxed about it, right? And not as overwhelmed and kind of spiraling into confusion and anxiety mode. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to show you how to break it up into chunks to make it easier for you. So we're going to talk about that in a minute. Doing it this way is exactly how we teach inside the nursing SOS membership community. We have an entire medication database for you that really takes all of the guesswork out of it for you. Out of learning pharmacology, we make it so, so easy. It's completely by step. Everything's laid out for you. So if you are overwhelmed, if you are stressed about studying farm, my friend, you do not have to be. Let us hold your hand through nursing school. We've got the whole medication database there for you where we give you the must know key points. We break it all down for you, super simple so you can actually understand it the first time and learn it faster and easier. So check that out. You are going to love it. So this is the key, like we always, always teach is to group your medications by class, okay? You do not want to memorize them, learn them individually. You really want to break them up into groups and learn them as a group. Now here's the best way to do this. When you are breaking up your medications or learning your medications, break them up by pharmacologic. Or therapeutic class, all right? Because then that way you can learn them as a group of medication class, pharmacologic class, therapeutic class, rather than having to learn them all separately or individually. Because here's the really cool thing about this, is that all medications within the same pharmacologic class, or even the same therapeutic class, their mechanism of action is going to be very, very similar. All right? So medications that belong to the same group, the same medication class, they're going to have either the same or a similar mechanism of action. So they're going to act pretty similar in the body. And then that also means that they have similar side effects, similar things that you'll need to assess for similar ways to give it, and nursing considerations that you just have to keep in mind, all those things are going to be similar for all the medications inside that group. So it's very important that you break down your medications into groups rather than just trying to learn them individually, which can be really overwhelming and, and just not helpful. Now, I have a free pharmacology cheat sheet for you that will help you do this, to break your medications down into their pharmacologic class based on the ending of that medication. So you'll definitely want to snag that. I'm going to put the link down below in the description for you to snag that free cheat sheet. And if you are a nursing SOS member, you're going to want to log into your dashboard, check out the pharmacology course that we have for you, make sure that you have downloaded all the templates that we have. We have an entire spreadsheet for you that does this for you, where you actually can choose if you want to break up your medications into class, like pharmacologic or therapeutic class, or even by body system. So you get to choose. If you're a nursing SOS member, definitely download that spreadsheet. So all of that is done for you. We try to make it as easy as possible. Now, like we said, grouping medications by class is the key. But then also, when you group your medications by class, the one thing you're going to want to focus on is the mechanism of action for that class. Okay? You do not want to have to memorize a list of individual medications. Like we said, you have to focus on that mechanism of action for the class, because all the medications within that one class are going to have a similar or even the same mechanism of action. So they're going to be very, very similar to each other. They're going to act very similarly in the body. So you might as well just group them together, right? And learn them all as a group rather than individually, which wastes a ton of time. So please, please, please don't do that to yourself. Is not worth it, my friend. Learn it as a group. Focus on that mechanism of action. And then, just like we teach inside our Farm for Method, inside the nursing Essence membership community, you want to connect everything back to the mechanism of action. What side effects are you going to see with these medications in this group? What are you going to assess for? What nursing considerations do you need to be thinking about as you're giving this medication? Connect all those back to the mechanism of action. Now this, my friend, is critical thinking. I do not want you to have to memorize really anything in nursing school, really. I really want to help you make that leap to critical thinking, because that is what your exams are going to test you on. Your exams are not going to test you on how well you memorize a list of things, right? That's not how nursing school works. We want to make that leap to now critical thinking, and that's exactly what we're doing here. So when you know the mechanism of action and what's actually happening with the medication inside the body, then you can look at the side effects and what you're going to assess for and the nursing considerations that you need to be thinking about. Look at those and connect them back to the mechanism of action. Now, like I said, if you're a nursing assist member, check out the medication database we have inside the community for you, because we do all of that for you. We walk you through all the critical thinking for all the meds that you have to know for nursing school. So that just makes it so easy for you. Now, the next tip is really actually a big, big one that I don't talk about a ton, and I probably should, but that is keeping a master list of medications. So what I noticed when I was in nursing school is that I would have a patient, they would have this list, big, long list of medications, and then I would. I would learn it or study them for that patient, and then I would get a list from lecture class and a list from skills lab or whatever or other patients, and then I would just keep them separate. And that's not really helpful. Don't keep the list separate. Create a combined master list of medications that you need to know for nursing school. And then that way you don't have to keep writing and rewriting and kind of relearning it or thinking oh wait, did I do this over here? Did I do it with this one? Like with this patient or this patient? Then it's all in one place. So keep a master list of all the medications that you are learning about in lecture class or with your patients at clinical, in skills lab, wherever. Make sure that you have a running list of all those medications, which is just going to make it way easier to keep everything organized and to learn them faster. And a great way to learn your medications is to write them out on med cards or to use flashcards. So if you are a nursing US member, you have access to these templates that we have for you which are super fun and pretty and you can write out the information that you need, need to know for your medications on that med card template. Or if you would like, we have our flashcards, our pharmacology flashcards for you in the shop as well. So be sure to check those out. We have the individual cards and then we also have the medication class cards, which my friend, is a huge deal. This is, this is the key. Like we said in nursing school, when you are studying pharmacology, please do not memorize your medications individually. You've got to break it up by class, which is exactly what we do for you in these flashcards as well. So that will be a really good resource for you as you go through your program. Now, a huge part of learning pharmacology faster in nursing school is knowing the mechanism of action like we said, and the pathophysiology behind everything. So in this video right here, I'm going to walk you through how to learn patho faster so that you can pass your exams way easier. And if you love this video, write love in the comments below and go become the nurse that God created only you to be. You are going to do fantastic, my friend. I will see you over there in that next video.