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Pharmacology in medical school
Started by leagall
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Its hard in the sense that there is a lot of memorizing to do but it's still probably my favorite class. It allows me to learn the nitty gritty mechanisms of disease processes which I normally don't pay the attention to 😴
If you can take a pharm class or two, I would. The more the merrier
If you can take a pharm class or two, I would. The more the merrier
Thanks for your advice. So is the class more conceptual like physiology or memorization-based like Anatomy? I am good at memorization-based classes like Anatomy because I can memorize quickly---it's the more conceptual-based classes like Physiology that I have difficulty with.
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It is a mix of conceptual and memorization. I feel like you to have a good understanding of the physiology (with the exception of some units like the CNS unit in which the reason why the drugs do what they do is less clear) behind each system to understand what the drugs are doing BEFORE you can start memorizing, but there is a great deal of memorization. I think the memorization for pharm can be even worse than anatomy because there is no visual link to the material you are learning and 80% of the names of the drugs have no connection to what the drug actually does - there is a serious lack of naming conventions...
Most med students I know find pharm to be the worst. I would advise to take as much as you can. I personally dont think you get enough in med school.
I have seen too many residents writing for stuff that I have to fix. Attendings too.
I have seen too many residents writing for stuff that I have to fix. Attendings too.
Sometimes you just have to make up your own naming conventions. Ex: metformin for diabetes 2, inhibits gluconeogenesis. The "formin" reminds me that something is "being formed," i.e., glucose. Not the best and sometimes damn near impossible to associate the drug name with anything useful, but it can be helpful.
Well at my school, pharm is a 1 week course where you learn the basics (loading dose, maint. dose, competitive/noncomp inhibition, etc etc.) of pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics. Then we learn about each individual drug later during the respective organ systems courses.
In my opinion, taking an undergrad course in pharmacodynamics/kinetics may be a waste of time, since the basic pharm course they teach in med school is fairly easy and straightforward and only takes 1 week. Even if your undergrad pharm course teaches about specific drugs and their mechanism of action and side effects, I don't see how it'd be useful since you wouldn't have had much exposure to pathology yet, and besides, new drugs come out all the time and treatment standards change so frequently that whatever you might learn in your undergrad course might not apply by the time you learn it again in med school.
Anyway, just my 2 cents.
In my opinion, taking an undergrad course in pharmacodynamics/kinetics may be a waste of time, since the basic pharm course they teach in med school is fairly easy and straightforward and only takes 1 week. Even if your undergrad pharm course teaches about specific drugs and their mechanism of action and side effects, I don't see how it'd be useful since you wouldn't have had much exposure to pathology yet, and besides, new drugs come out all the time and treatment standards change so frequently that whatever you might learn in your undergrad course might not apply by the time you learn it again in med school.
Anyway, just my 2 cents.
