Memorization in Pharmacy School

[moi]

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Ok, so I know memorization is one of my weakest points. That's one of the reasons I decided against going to medical school - I would've sucked at memorizing symptoms, etc of a bunch of different disease states. Plus, I was never very big on being a doctor anyway.

However, of recent I've started wondering; isn't Pharmacy school mostly about memorizing drugs and their brand/generic names, side effects, how they work, contraindications, etc? I mean, when I was studying for the Pharm. Tech. Exam, I could not get a lot of that to stick in my head.

So, I guess my question is, am I setting myself up for failure by going to Pharmacy school where I'll need to depend on one of my weaknesses?

Your thoughts please.

Thanks.

 

[WVUPharm2007]

Yes. It's basically three years of becoming a drug encyclopedia, then one year of kissing people's asses on rotations. You still have to memorize symptoms and disease states for pathophys and therapeutics. The only thing we really don't get that physicians get is in depth anatomy and physical diagnosis. And even those two areas have survey courses to give us an overview.

If you are not good in memorizing/ass kissing, I would suggest improving. Try playing memory games or something. Your brain adapts, trust me.

 

[sdn1977]

As much as I respect WVU & his "colorful" opinions, mine differ.

Yes - there is some memorization. Most of it is inconsequential to your daily life (ie - being able to write a complete structure of prostaglandin & how it's chemical structure changes with metabolism).

However....I took anatomy & neuroanatomy with medical students (the dental students did an extra quarter of neuro without us). I took a full year of physiology with the medical students which provided the basis for understanding how a normal body functions.

When you get to therapeutics & pharmacology...you learn how disease alters the "normal" and how medications also alter the "normal" & the disease process itself.

If you want....pharmacy can be just about memorizing. If you choose that path - you won't retain what you were taught & will know how to count, pour, label, stick & process insurance.

However, if you want your education to be different from just memorization and if you want to learn about medications & disease management with medications - you'll approach your education as a learning process which never ends. It won't be hard to remember because you are basing the new material on a well learned base.

No - if you came & asked me to draw the structure of gentamicin & give its dissociation constant......I couldn't do it. I was able to do it at one time, but if I need that information it is at my fingertips in a few keystrokes. However, I can give you the most likely bacteria in my geographic area which are susceptible to it & how to initiate the dosing & adjust the dosing without looking it up - all because I LEARNED it - not memorized it.

Does that help?

 

[moi]

As much as I respect WVU & his "colorful" opinions, mine differ.

Yes - there is some memorization. Most of it is inconsequential to your daily life (ie - being able to write a complete structure of prostaglandin & how it's chemical structure changes with metabolism).

However....I took anatomy & neuroanatomy with medical students (the dental students did an extra quarter of neuro without us). I took a full year of physiology with the medical students which provided the basis for understanding how a normal body functions.

When you get to therapeutics & pharmacology...you learn how disease alters the "normal" and how medications also alter the "normal" & the disease process itself.

If you want....pharmacy can be just about memorizing. If you choose that path - you won't retain what you were taught & will know how to count, pour, label, stick & process insurance.

However, if you want your education to be different from just memorization and if you want to learn about medications & disease management with medications - you'll approach your education as a learning process which never ends. It won't be hard to remember because you are basing the new material on a well learned base.

No - if you came & asked me to draw the structure of gentamicin & give its dissociation constant......I couldn't do it. I was able to do it at one time, but if I need that information it is at my fingertips in a few keystrokes. However, I can give you the most likely bacteria in my geographic area which are susceptible to it & how to initiate the dosing & adjust the dosing without looking it up - all because I LEARNED it - not memorized it.

Does that help?

Yes, it does help. I know that for the most part, what you get into your brain by rote memorization doesn't stay there very long (especially for me). But, maybe I'm being shortsighted or naiive, but you mentioned knowing all this information relating to gentamycin, for instance; I'm sure you also know this kind of information for a lot of other drugs. How did you learn it all, if not by memorizing it?

I guess my real question is, how do you keep from memorizing, and focus on learning, when you have so many different drugs to learn about?

I hope I'm making sense - feels like I'm rambling a bit🙁

 

[sdn1977]

Yes, it does help. I know that for the most part, what you get into your brain by rote memorization doesn't stay there very long (especially for me). But, maybe I'm being shortsighted or naiive, but you mentioned knowing all this information relating to gentamycin, for instance; I'm sure you also know this kind of information for a lot of other drugs. How did you learn it all, if not by memorizing it?

I guess my real question is, how do you keep from memorizing, and focus on learning, when you have so many different drugs to learn about?

I hope I'm making sense - feels like I'm rambling a bit🙁

No - you ask a good question. You're right - memorization goes into your short term bank - it stays there long enough for the test. That has its purpose for sure.

But.....learning - real learning takes a long time & repetition. That's why it takes a long time to be a pharmacist or a physician or a dentist. You not only learn it in the classroom, you also have to take a test on it. Then, in your clinical years, your instructor wants to know all the reasons why your test patient could have elevated liver function tests for example. You know you knew them in your pharmacology class, but can't remember them....so you go back & look. You also know you were exposed to the variety of illnesses the patient has, but can't remember if they resulted in elevated liver function tests....so you go back and look. Then...you take an oral exam after every clinical course you take & now you know you need to go back & really learn this stuff really, really well because the questions get asked over & over & over - by your professors, by the attending on rounds, by your preceptor, etc.... By the time you are actually doing patient rounds - you know your stuff pretty well - you just have to learn how to put it to use in the real world - which is where some folks have a terrible time. "Book" learning & practical use can be widely different & arrogance has no place in this level of learning!

Remember too - drugs are not learned individually. You will learn them as classes - aminoglycosides, proton pump inhibitors, ace inhibitors, sulfonylureas, etc.....After you learn the class generally, its easy to know how the individual drugs within a class are different just by knowing how side chains or stereoisomers work. (Which is why you really do need to know & understand chemistry!)

Don't worry - it all comes naturally. But...start as you mean to go on! If you want to memorize (oh & get A's -for what those are worth 🙁 ) - that's all you'll get. If you want to learn & USE what you learned - take the time to really, really learn & understand the material. Don't go on until you do - it will only shortchange yourself & limit how useful you ultimately are & how much fun the career can be.

 

[PharmMnM]

I thought I had a good memory but I guess I was wrong

I studied the PharmTech books to take the CPTBoard Exam and when I started to memorize the list of popular meds I totally blanked out because all I could see were random letters like

tousdfljweor
asfoclvnower
sdfncoewfrsf
weornvower
sfojpworeif

you get what im saying. its all greek!

I thought to myself, how am I suppose to memorize a bunch of random letters put together? I am usual good at memorizing words I've seen before such as peoples names and faces and such but this was just ridiculous! I could not memorize all those foreign names and there was no way to apply mnemonics to them.

I noticed suffices help a lot but even with that, it was so hard to memorize so many and remember what goes with what brand names.


How did you guys memorize all the drug names???

 

[dgroulx]

How did you guys memorize all the drug names???

By working in a pharmacy every day. You get to know them really well. Prescriptions are usually written with the brand name. When you type it into the computer, the generic name pops up. Do this a couple of hundred times a day and it will sink in.

I've worked at places that alphabetize by generic name only and places that alphabetize by brand name. So, when you're pulling meds to do a fill, you learn that way, too.

 

[rxlynn]

I thought I had a good memory but I guess I was wrong

I studied the PharmTech books to take the CPTBoard Exam and when I started to memorize the list of popular meds I totally blanked out because all I could see were random letters like

tousdfljweor
asfoclvnower
sdfncoewfrsf
weornvower
sfojpworeif

you get what im saying. its all greek!

I thought to myself, how am I suppose to memorize a bunch of random letters put together? I am usual good at memorizing words I've seen before such as peoples names and faces and such but this was just ridiculous! I could not memorize all those foreign names and there was no way to apply mnemonics to them.

I noticed suffices help a lot but even with that, it was so hard to memorize so many and remember what goes with what brand names.


How did you guys memorize all the drug names???

Also, I think it helps a lot when you can start learning what the drugs are for a little. That seemed to help some of the names stick in my mind. Sort of like the suffixes you mention. But Dana is right - it's the type of thing that you will pick up without a lot of effort when you work a lot in a pharmacy. I carried a brand/generic book with me everywhere for the first 6 months or so. After that, I didn't really need it except for some sort of unusual drug.

 

[cycloketocaine]

I thought I had a good memory but I guess I was wrong

I studied the PharmTech books to take the CPTBoard Exam and when I started to memorize the list of popular meds I totally blanked out because all I could see were random letters like

tousdfljweor
asfoclvnower
sdfncoewfrsf
weornvower
sfojpworeif

you get what im saying. its all greek!

I thought to myself, how am I suppose to memorize a bunch of random letters put together? I am usual good at memorizing words I've seen before such as peoples names and faces and such but this was just ridiculous! I could not memorize all those foreign names and there was no way to apply mnemonics to them.

I noticed suffices help a lot but even with that, it was so hard to memorize so many and remember what goes with what brand names.


How did you guys memorize all the drug names???

If you have ever worked in pharmacy for very long, I wouldn't worry about learning drug names for the PTCB. The big thing is dosage calculation. There are tons of them.

 

[greatdeals225]

If you have ever worked in pharmacy for very long, I wouldn't worry about learning drug names for the PTCB. The big thing is dosage calculation. There are tons of them.

I totally agree. I would say a good 40% of my test was drug calculation, dosage calculation, dosage conversion and that type of thing, all related to math.. and some logics. I've worked in a pharmacy part time for 1.5 years now. I remember when i was training, the tech training me was explaining to me what those drugs were for.. blah blah.. i was so overwhelmed... but after a little while, those things come to you naturally, especially when you try to know what those drugs are for (diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol)... and by the end of your first day as a tech, you'll know what Lipitor is for!

 

[cycloketocaine]

How did you guys memorize all the drug names???

This dosen't help you, but the only way I learned drug names ( I am now a walking drug encyclopedia. I can tell you brand and generic names, what the AWP and ACQ are) was to work in a pharmacy. Look up every name you don't know.

 

[PharmMnM]

whats ACQ and AWP

 

[cycloketocaine]

whats ACQ and AWP

Cost and wholesale price (Price you submit to insurance to see if they'll pay) I do all the ordering/drug entering/stocking/returning/compounding of drugs in my store, so I learn alot.

 

[Gosha]

I agree – memorizing sucks when it comes to large volumes of information and when you do not know how to memorize in the first place. I read the replies to your post and the vast majority of them pretty much conceded to the doomed boring nature of memorizing. And the reason is because the majority doesn’t really know how to memorize. There are tools and methods that will teach you how to organize information in your brain in the way that it will be accessible at all times and how to make the process of memorization fun instead of boring. You can find one of the revolutionary systems HERE which actually teaches you about how our memory works in the first place and then offers you a set of lessons with exercises where you can actually learn how to USE your memory effectively and without any pain.

 

[mana20]

It's basically three years of becoming a drug encyclopedia, then one year of kissing people's asses on rotations.

Thats wonderful, Pharm school summed up 😀

Anyone can memorize, its just a matter of effort and getting rid of distractions.

 

[Gosha]

Thats wonderful, Pharm school summed up 😀

Anyone can memorize, its just a matter of effort and getting rid of distractions.

I agree that anyone can memorize. However, the matter of effort and getting rid of distractions should be focused on acquiring the SKILL of memorizing and not just use the beaten pass of redundant repetition of medical mnemonics. Click here to learn about the method and take the course if you wish. It will not only teach you about your memory - (that is actually not even the point) - but it will actually train and even revolutionize it - will make you capable of memorizing in large volumes naturally.

 

[letjin]

I am more "problem-solving, understanding concepts" kind of person. In that manner, I really like pharmacology or med chem... you just understand 1-2 key concepts + commit that to memory and you never have to memorize anything else. However...class like therapeutics are pretty much memorizing to me. You can come up with signs/symptoms if you know your physio/patho pretty well, but to "understand" a drug therapy...? There's no way around but to memorize various staging criteria for disease states and to memorize which class of HTN meds are preferred if patient has DM or CKD, etc...

 

[GatorRxGirl]

there is no memorizing in pharmacy school...only learning (not cramming to memorize the nite before a test). well if you want to be good anyway.

There is some memorization but most of it is pretty small stuff. I agree with the above post that if you want pharmacy can be just about memorizing. It's up to you if you want to value your education and constantly learn.

 

[WVUPharm2007]

there is no memorizing in pharmacy school...only learning (not cramming to memorize the nite before a test). well if you want to be good anyway.

What are you talking about, there is tons of memorizing. It's all you do. Sure there are concepts to be understood, but most are rather easy to grasp.

Try passing the state law test without memorizing laws.

Try passing the NAPLEX without memorizing drug names.

This isn't understanding a concept, it's associating arbitrary words/numbers with other arbitrary words/numbers. For instance, there is no scientific reason that the brand for levoalbuterol is Xopenex, it is just the arbitrary word they chose for the molecule. And you have to know that. Ergo, memorization.

If your school doesn't have you memorizing crap, they aren't preparing you for the boards very well. Or they are just renaming everything you do in pharmacy school to something more platable and blowing smoke up your collective asses - which is 80% of pharmacy school, mind you.

 

[Requiem]

What are you talking about, there is tons of memorizing. It's all you do. Sure there are concepts to be understood, but most are rather easy to grasp.

she's a first year who's in like her first month of classes...

The one who has been posted all those stupid pharmaceutics pre-lab questions about what does glycerin do? whats a benefit of speen and twan?? etc, etc. Don't worry about it, she may eventually realize what pharmacy school really is.

 

[GatorRxGirl]

she's a first year who's in like her first month of classes...

The one who has been posted all those stupid pharmaceutics pre-lab questions about what does glycerin do? whats a benefit of speen and twan?? etc, etc. Don't worry about it, she may eventually realize what pharmacy school really is.

I never posted anything like that. If you're going to talk smack about someone, make sure you have the right person. By the way, I don't need anyone to tell me "what pharmacy school really is." 😀 Also, looking at your previous posts, you have some serious issues with "newbies" and "first years" so maybe, as a budding professional, you should lighten up because you too were once a P1 and you probably had some "stupid" questions too. I feel bad for any student that will ever do a rotation with you one day.

 

[cycloketocaine]

I never posted anything like that. If you're going to talk smack about someone, make sure you have the right person. By the way, I don't need anyone to tell me "what pharmacy school really is." 😀 Also, looking at your previous posts, you have some serious issues with "newbies" and "first years" so maybe, as a budding professional, you should lighten up because you too were once a P1 and you probably had some "stupid" questions too. I feel bad for any student that will ever do a rotation with you one day.

I think I know who they are talking about, and it's not you. No worries. 🙂

 

[Requiem]

I never posted anything like that.

Completely my fault, the persons name was "GaPharmGirl09", I guess you can see the similarity.

I've been up ~17 hours, I apologize for the mistake.

P.S. anyone who gets to do a rotation with me will be privledged 😉