how to study pharma?

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blankaflour

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what is your strategy for studying pharma?
4 me it seemed 2 be easy but by time with more drugs & diseases i become lost
i seem to confuse between drug properties ,mechanism & all stuff
any suggestion?
 
Heh. I just took my pharm final today, so I figured I should reply while it's still fresh for me. 🙂
Sheer repetition was a big part of it for me. I had to go over things for that class much more than any of the others I've had so far.
I would also suggest making up tables grouping together the similar drugs to help you keep the big picture in mind.
Good luck.
 
blankaflour said:
what is your strategy for studying pharma?
4 me it seemed 2 be easy but by time with more drugs & diseases i become lost
i seem to confuse between drug properties ,mechanism & all stuff
any suggestion?
Click to expand...

Hi there,
Pick up a copy of Pharmacology Recall. It is a very small book that organizes Pharm extremely well. The Power Review in the back of the book is worth the entire cost of this book. If nothing else, borrow this book and photocopy those pages.

Another strategy: Do this as you go along.
Arrange your notes into groupings such as ANS, CNS, Antimicrobials etc.
Then arrange your classes of pharmaceuticals under those headings by mechanism of action.
Know the representative drugs for each class and know the side-effects

Put things like Pharmokinetics and Pharmacodynamics separately. Be sure to list your formulas so they are handy for Step I.

When you are ready to review for Step I, you have your review notes in place.

Good luck!
njbmd 🙂
 
blankaflour said:
what is your strategy for studying pharma?
Click to expand...

1) Limit myself to one margarita before study time
2) "Clinical Pharmacology Made Ridiculously Simple"

😎
 
I normally hate making notecards but pharm was the one class where it helped.

I used different colors for each category of drugs and each drug got a few notecards- one for mechanism, one for category it belongs to, one for adverse effects etc.

Being able to see them spread out on the floor in their categories helped me to visualize much better than just listing them on a sheet of paper.

And just making the cards provided enough repetition to help the important points stick in my head.
 
Tip for boards:

Learn funky side effects. Stuff like lupus syndrome, stevens-johnson, sulfa allergies, etc are favorites for Step1.
 
Another step 1 tip would be to pay attention to which drugs either induce or inhibit the CYP 450 system.
 
I HIGHLY recommend Katzung's Pharmacology Board and Examination Review. They have really well organized chapters, and the flow charts help you get the overall picture for each group of drugs. There's also alot of good USMLE type questions at the end of each chapter.
 
I'd second the PharmRecall suggestion above, that's a great book.

I actually learned alot of my pharmacology from FirstAid for Step1. The pharm section is nice and compact (about 50 easy to read pages) and the mnemonics are helpful when trying to remember side effect profiles. Plus they include important flowcharts/diagrams from other textbooks (like Lippincott/Katzung) so you don't miss out on too much.
 
Pharma was one of my favorite subjects. I utilized a combination of the above suggestions. Making notecards was helpful for some drug classes (try to write out from memory as much as you can rather than just copying info), First Aid is short, sweet and to the point, Katzung's Exam and Board Review was my FAVORITE, and I reviewed for Boards with Lange Pharmacology Flash Cards which are OK.
 
Repetition is the key.

Beyond making tables/notecards/etc what helped me through the first 2 years was constantly thinking about it. Whenever I was studying/reading about a disease, I tried to remember what drug you'd use to treat it, and thought about why that drug would work for that condition.

By doing that, you link drugs to diseases, which helps you remember mechanisms as well as pathophysiology, because there's a good chance that the mechanism of the drug has something to do with what's going wrong. Then when you remember one thing you remember everything together in a nice big chunk of info.

It also lets you access the information in several different ways. Can't remember the pathophysiology of some disease? Well if you remember the drug you use to treat it and the mechanism of the drug, you might be able to piece together the pathophysiology. And vice versa, if you forget the mechanism but know the disease you use it for, you can use the pathophys to get to the mechanism.
 
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