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Pharmacology help needed
- Thread starter Jonathan13180
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I made my own flashcards from the info in First Aid and it was fine. No need to buy flashcards that are going to be too detailed! 🙂
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Thanks. Ill take a look at first aid.
i was too lazy to make flash cards and i just used lippincotts. it has all the information in first aid and more. the trick to use them effectively is to ignore the "and more" part and focus only on what is in FA. I just took a highlighter and marked up what was in FA and essentially ignored everything else.
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I studied my class notes really well for my final (pharm was our best class), then reviewed 1st Aid and my class notecards. Yeah, it was overkill.
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I used a similar strategy and received a "star" in pharm on my Step 1....When I went through pharm for the first time, I reviewed charts I made for pharm during the school year (with mneumonics) while following along in/annotating FA pharm.....and then the 2nd and 3rd time I went through pharm I used FA only....
Concentrate on MOA and S/Es for most of the drugs....a question bank will help you key in on the most important S/Es....
-tx
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I used the BRS ones, they were short enough to get through quickly.
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I also made my own flashcards based on FA and it was way more than enough for the test. The key for pharm is keep it simple: only drugs mentioned in first aid, MOA, side effects/contraindications. That's all.
If you're really motivated read pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics chapter from kaplan book or your book of choice as FA is kind of skimpy.
If you're really motivated read pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics chapter from kaplan book or your book of choice as FA is kind of skimpy.
Studied them for days, only got one question on methotrexate (very easy one). Le sigh.
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I had 5 or 6 difficult pharm questions far beyond the scope of first aid which I had to guess on, but I did fine in pharm so they were probably experimental.
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I'm using pharmacology recall right now as i go through classes. Its a nice concise q & a type format. Probably overkill, because again, the overwhelming vote is for FA --but I learn best with questions.
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I recommend making charts based on drug class...it keeps them close together so you can make quick comparisons (like which diuretics make you lose vs retain calcium); as far as textbooks go, lipincott Pharmacology is pretty good.
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I didn't think any of the pharm questions on USMLE were hard. All antibiotic questions were either straight up DOC's or asking very high-yield SE's. This was one of the times where having monster-long stems were actually advantageous. You have an idea what the answer is before you get through half the passage and the remaining stems would just re-inforce your answer. For me, identifying the bug always ended up being more difficult.
Strangely, the pharm questions on my COMLEX were much harder than USMLE. Well, more bizarre anyhow. Lots of micro questions asking for 2nd and 3rd alternate drugs. It was really obnoxious.
btw, how I studied DOC's for bugs (way overkill, imo)... I consolidated all the DOC's from Clinical Micro made ridiculously simple, Lange micro and Rapid Review micro into a single chart. After that, I made up as many non-sensical mnemonics I could.
e.g. Chlamydia trachomatis: FEATz Fluroquinolone, erythromycin, azithromycin, tetracycline.
You pee straight c's : yersinia pestis streptomycin chloramphenicol
