Learning drug brand names

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I was reviewing pharmacology for step 3/Internship and I came across a really good website for learning brand names of drugs. Its a course in an online periodic review program like Anki, called memrise. Anyway I thought I'd share the link. , since I wish I had had something similar at the start of my clerkships. Hope it helps someone

Originally Posted by Perrotfish

I was reviewing pharmacology for step 3/Internship and I came across a really good website for learning brand names of drugs. Its a course in an online periodic review program like Anki, called memrise. Anyway I thought I'd share the link. , since I wish I had had something similar at the start of my clerkships. Hope it helps someone

Epocrates and experience

Originally Posted by OveractiveBrain

Epocrates and experience

Quoted for truth. There's much more important things you should be focused on studying during your free time as a medical student. Just keeping looking up drugs every time you don't recognize a name and you'll be fine.

Originally Posted by ZagDoc

Quoted for truth. There's much more important things you should be focused on studying during your free time as a medical student. Just keeping looking up drugs every time you don't recognize a name and you'll be fine.

Meh. I thought it was ridiculous that I was continually looking up drugs I had just spent a year memorizing, or that I couldn't follow the flow of conversation on rounds because I was missing half the drug names. I felt like it would have been a lot more efficient to just take a few hours and memorize the brand names early in my clerkships.

Anyway no need to use it if you don't want it. Just thought I'd share.

I still don't know a lot of those names. I feel like there are a handful that get used all the time (everyone refers to the benzos as Versed, Ativan, Xanax and Valium), but otherwise we use generic terms pretty often. Plavix, Vicodin, and then some of the combo antibiotics (Zosyn = pip/tazo, Unasyn = amp/sulbact, Augmentin = amox/clav), also come up frequently though, I guess.

Then again, my facility - like the VA - uses only generic terms in a patient's med list, so I don't really need to decipher it.

Originally Posted by TheProwler

I still don't know a lot of those names. I feel like there are a handful that get used all the time (everyone refers to the benzos as Versed, Ativan, Xanax and Valium), but otherwise we use generic terms pretty often. Plavix, Vicodin, and then some of the combo antibiotics (Zosyn = pip/tazo, Unasyn = amp/sulbact, Augmentin = amox/clav), also come up frequently though, I guess.

Then again, my facility - like the VA - uses only generic terms in a patient's med list, so I don't really need to decipher it.

I feel like the information is most useful in the ER, or during an admission from he ER. Especially when you're trying to guess the name from the patient's sound alike list. When your patient says 'I'm on benicar' that's easy to look up. When you patient is on 'bejinar
.. or um becidar... um its a green pill' then knowing the brand name matters more.

Again, I agree its not vital information, but I feel like its nice to know and fast to learn.

Originally Posted by TheProwler

I still don't know a lot of those names. I feel like there are a handful that get used all the time (everyone refers to the benzos as Versed, Ativan, Xanax and Valium), but otherwise we use generic terms pretty often. Plavix, Vicodin, and then some of the combo antibiotics (Zosyn = pip/tazo, Unasyn = amp/sulbact, Augmentin = amox/clav), also come up frequently though, I guess.

Then again, my facility - like the VA - uses only generic terms in a patient's med list, so I don't really need to decipher it.

What's really starting to get me is there are more and more patient's popping up on oral thrombin/Xa inhibitors. We had to cancel a liver resection this week because the patient was on rivaroxaban but no-one recognized the brand name (Xarelto) on the patient's meds list.

Originally Posted by ZagDoc

What's really starting to get me is there are more and more patient's popping up on oral thrombin/Xa inhibitors. We had to cancel a liver resection this week because the patient was on rivaroxaban but no-one recognized the brand name (Xarelto) on the patient's meds list.

Don't know if I would have recognized the generic...