MD & DO Can someone help me and lend assistance please.....

[Tennis Guy]

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Hey everybody,
So, I'm doing a Masters program, and I do seem to be struggling with understanding certain concepts in courses that mirror medical school curriculum (pharmacology specifically.) I do my best to understand everything by myself, however I do ask the professors and fellow students questions for understanding things, when I need help understanding concepts. Unfortunately, I've tried to meet up with classmate(s) to study, but they are all basically lone wolves that like to do things on their own and are not really that helpful. So, I was wondering, if anyone on here is willing to help me (medical students would be nice or anyone who has taken medical pharmacology or pharmacology courses,) if I have trouble understanding certain concepts and how to study them to understand them better please? I greatly appreciate all of your help, assistance, and thank you so much for your time!!!!! ..... 🙂

 

[BluegrassBuckeye]

I'm willing to bet your school has some sort of tutoring program available to you if you just ask someone in student affairs office or someone in the pharmacology department office. I don't think anyone on here will be able to offer any meaningful tutoring/assistance to you even if they wanted to. It's something that has to be provided one on one and tailored to you and this doesn't really lend itself to that. I will however give you my two cents on how I learned pharm, but keep in mind that people don't all learn the same way and you have to figure out what works for you.

Anyway, on the surface pharmacology seems like a straight memorization type course that you just have to power through. Drug A is for Disease X,Y,Z and has MOA of this and contraindications of that. However, I found it much easier to learn the big picture physiology/pathophysiology (you're gonna have to learn that anyway) and then just plug in the drug wherever it fits. That way you can basically intuit out all the major aspects of that drug without having to memorize all the details. That's not going to work every time because there's always exceptions, but if you can just use deductive reasoning to figure out 90% of the information that means you only have to use brute memorization on 10%.

 

[Chibucks15]

Hey everybody,
So, I'm doing a Masters program, and I do seem to be struggling with understanding certain concepts in courses that mirror medical school curriculum (pharmacology specifically.) I do my best to understand everything by myself, however I do ask the professors and fellow students questions for understanding things, when I need help understanding concepts. Unfortunately, I've tried to meet up with classmate(s) to study, but they are all basically lone wolves that like to do things on their own and are not really that helpful. So, I was wondering, if anyone on here is willing to help me (medical students would be nice or anyone who has taken medical pharmacology or pharmacology courses,) if I have trouble understanding certain concepts and how to study them to understand them better please? I greatly appreciate all of your help, assistance, and thank you so much for your time!!!!! .....

sketchy pharm is the only way I've learned them

 

[Medic741]

Hey everybody,
So, I'm doing a Masters program, and I do seem to be struggling with understanding certain concepts in courses that mirror medical school curriculum (pharmacology specifically.) I do my best to understand everything by myself, however I do ask the professors and fellow students questions for understanding things, when I need help understanding concepts. Unfortunately, I've tried to meet up with classmate(s) to study, but they are all basically lone wolves that like to do things on their own and are not really that helpful. So, I was wondering, if anyone on here is willing to help me (medical students would be nice or anyone who has taken medical pharmacology or pharmacology courses,) if I have trouble understanding certain concepts and how to study them to understand them better please? I greatly appreciate all of your help, assistance, and thank you so much for your time!!!!! .....

Honestly not something you can help someone else with. You put in the time & effort... can’t really spoon feed this stuff. Sketchy pharm all the way to make this content learnable though

 

[libertyyne]

There is only soo much you can think through in some of these subjects. There is unfortunately brute force memorization through repetition and eventually through daily use.

 

[Apple_1]

Important resources for me in Pharmacology:
1. Katzung and Trevor Pharmacology Board Review 11e
2. Lionel Raymon’s Becker Pharmacology review

Just the books were sufficient for getting me through lectures that were more confusing. These texts cover the essentials of what you need to know and the chapters are concise enough to promote understanding without skimping material.

Using tables helps me study and I wasn’t the biggest fan of sketchy, but everyone has their own method.
Things you should know to do well in each lecture:
1. Drug class and drugs within that class
2. Mechanism of action (pharmacodynamics)
3. Indications for use
4. What makes members of a class different from each other (often in terms of side effects or administration/use, but s/e is a biggy)
5. Pharmacokinetics (ADME - absorption, distribution, metabolism, elimination)
6. Side effects of drugs and important drug interactions

Do you need to memorize the minutiae of these details? No. You don’t need to remember the t-1/2 of every drug, but it would be helpful to know for certain lectures (e.g. opioids, anesthetics) which drugs are shorter-acting and which are longer. Use your judgment, lectures, and text as a guide.

Like posters mentioned above, this often requires memorizing but it will become intuitive if you know the underlying path.