Pharmacology

[cdmOMR]

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Anybody else absolutely hate this class? 4 tests, 100-150 drugs per test (mechanisms, interactions, contraindications etc) most of which I cant spell or pronounce. Names rarely correlate with their function. Even pneumonics are not doing the trick. 90% of them are not relevant at all. Lecturers rarely speak coherent english. 😕

By far the worst class Ive ever taken in dental school and undergrad combined😡. Any body else have similar sentiments?

 

[browncrack]

Dental school is generally an exercise in humility. Pharmacology is added specifically for this reason.

 

[raisacombs]

Can you become a pharmasist with a BS in pharmacology?

 

[saycheeese]

Can you become a pharmasist with a BS in pharmacology?

No....

 

[Regmata]

Lol

 

[winter32842]

Anybody else absolutely hate this class? 4 tests, 100-150 drugs per test (mechanisms, interactions, contraindications etc) most of which I cant spell or pronounce. Names rarely correlate with their function. Even pneumonics are not doing the trick. 90% of them are not relevant at all. Lecturers rarely speak coherent english. 😕

By far the worst class Ive ever taken in dental school and undergrad combined😡. Any body else have similar sentiments?

You think pharmacology is hard?? Try pharmacokinetics or medicinal chemistry. These along with therapeutics are the standard course of Pharmacy.

 

[cdmOMR]

You think pharmacology is hard?? Try pharmacokinetics or medicinal chemistry. These along with therapeutics are the standard course of Pharmacy.

Oh I am sure they are... except that's your profession. I hope you know those things. Imagine taking a tooth anatomy course (hey, you gotta know how those teeth chew pills, right?) Im sure you would be pretty unhappy too.

 

[DrReo]

You think pharmacology is hard?? Try pharmacokinetics or medicinal chemistry. These along with therapeutics are the standard course of Pharmacy.

When you add oral pathology, operative lab, anesthesia , prosthodontics lab, additional time intensive labs and many more lecture courses, makes pharmacology hard mr. pharmacy student

 

[winter32842]

Oh I am sure they are... except that's your profession. I hope you know those things. Imagine taking a tooth anatomy course (hey, you gotta know how those teeth chew pills, right?) Im sure you would be pretty unhappy too.

Actually, we spend great deal of time on physiology and anataomy of the mouth (including teeth).

Pharmacology is one of the most important subjects for dentists. For example, patients should not be on Bisphosphonate (like fosamax, boniva, actonel) immediately before or after certain dental procedures. Dentists use local anesthetics (like Lidocaine, Benzocaine) to numb the patients but those drugs may increase the risk of heart attacks in patients with history of heart-related diseases. The risk may be double for patients who are taking other drugs that also stimulate the heart like alpha-1 receptor agonist. Unfortunately, the dentists, that I have been to, do not ask these questions to any of the patients especially when some of those patients like me filled out the medication and disease list like 5 years ago.

Furthermore, there are lot of medication that can cause discoloration of teeth, teeth grinding and loss of bone mineral density of teeth. That is why you need to know the pharmacology (side-effects, drug interactions and the mechanism of action).

When you add oral pathology, operative lab, anesthesia , prosthodontics lab, additional time intensive labs and many more lecture courses, makes pharmacology hard mr. pharmacy student

This is what you call rigorous courses?? Try taking pharmacology, virology, pharmacokinetics, medicinal chemistry and therapeutics at the same time.

 

[lotexigeus]

Actually, we spend great deal of time on physiology and anataomy of the mouth (including teeth).

Pharmacology is one of the most important subjects for dentists. For example, patients should not be on Bisphosphonate (like fosamax, boniva, actonel) immediately before or after certain dental procedures. Dentists use local anesthetics (like Lidocaine, Benzocaine) to numb the patients but those drugs may increase the risk of heart attacks in patients with history of heart-related diseases. The risk may be double for patients who are taking other drugs that also stimulate the heart like alpha-1 receptor agonist. Unfortunately, the dentists, that I have been to, do not ask these questions to any of the patients especially when some of those patients like me filled out the medication and disease list like 5 years ago.

Furthermore, there are lot of medication that can cause discoloration of teeth, teeth grinding and loss of bone mineral density of teeth. That is why you need to know the pharmacology (side-effects, drug interactions and the mechanism of action).




This is what you call rigorous courses?? Try taking pharmacology, virology, pharmacokinetics, medicinal chemistry and therapeutics at the same time.

orly

 

[browncrack]

pharm for me is lots of tedious memorization of seemingly endless flashcards. of course, most basic science and preclinic is tedious memorization with a lab component. Effectively, after being bludgeoned over minor memorization points on multiple choice tests year after year it no longer matters what the class is called or what it is about. I just start memorizing slides on day one of lecture.

 

[DrReo]

Actually, we spend great deal of time on physiology and anataomy of the mouth (including teeth).

Pharmacology is one of the most important subjects for dentists. For example, patients should not be on Bisphosphonate (like fosamax, boniva, actonel) immediately before or after certain dental procedures. Dentists use local anesthetics (like Lidocaine, Benzocaine) to numb the patients but those drugs may increase the risk of heart attacks in patients with history of heart-related diseases. The risk may be double for patients who are taking other drugs that also stimulate the heart like alpha-1 receptor agonist. Unfortunately, the dentists, that I have been to, do not ask these questions to any of the patients especially when some of those patients like me filled out the medication and disease list like 5 years ago.

Furthermore, there are lot of medication that can cause discoloration of teeth, teeth grinding and loss of bone mineral density of teeth. That is why you need to know the pharmacology (side-effects, drug interactions and the mechanism of action).




This is what you call rigorous courses?? Try taking pharmacology, virology, pharmacokinetics, medicinal chemistry and therapeutics at the same time.

I never said rigorous. I was implying time intensive. Lab courses can eat up much of your night day after day depending on the projects due.

We understand dentistry is second to pharm in difficultly.

 

[liriano]

pharm for me is lots of tedious memorization of seemingly endless flashcards. of course, most basic science and preclinic is tedious memorization with a lab component. Effectively, after being bludgeoned over minor memorization points on multiple choice tests year after year it no longer matters what the class is called or what it is about. I just start memorizing slides on day one of lecture.

Amen to that!

 

[DrReo]

pharm for me is lots of tedious memorization of seemingly endless flashcards. of course, most basic science and preclinic is tedious memorization with a lab component. Effectively, after being bludgeoned over minor memorization points on multiple choice tests year after year it no longer matters what the class is called or what it is about. I just start memorizing slides on day one of lecture.

Do you listen to the lecture or are you memorizing while you're in lecture?

This is definitely a summary of DS.

 

[AlcoHulk]

Actually, we spend great deal of time on physiology and anataomy of the mouth (including teeth).

Pharmacology is one of the most important subjects for dentists. For example, patients should not be on Bisphosphonate (like fosamax, boniva, actonel) immediately before or after certain dental procedures. Dentists use local anesthetics (like Lidocaine, Benzocaine) to numb the patients but those drugs may increase the risk of heart attacks in patients with history of heart-related diseases. The risk may be double for patients who are taking other drugs that also stimulate the heart like alpha-1 receptor agonist. Unfortunately, the dentists, that I have been to, do not ask these questions to any of the patients especially when some of those patients like me filled out the medication and disease list like 5 years ago.

Furthermore, there are lot of medication that can cause discoloration of teeth, teeth grinding and loss of bone mineral density of teeth. That is why you need to know the pharmacology (side-effects, drug interactions and the mechanism of action).




This is what you call rigorous courses?? Try taking pharmacology, virology, pharmacokinetics, medicinal chemistry and therapeutics at the same time.

I'm not saying Pharmacy isn't hard (I imagine it is), but what DrReo said is right. Its all about time balance in dental school (lab/clinic and memorizing stuff). A different kind of rigorous if you will. Let's not compare how "rigorous" our schooling is, shall we?

BTW most of us dentists/dental students know the stuff you mentioned. Maybe not the pharmacokinetics and all, but we are well aware of the drugs, pathology and clinical implications 🙂

 

[cdmOMR]

Actually, we spend great deal of time on physiology and anataomy of the mouth (including teeth).

Pharmacology is one of the most important subjects for dentists. For example, patients should not be on Bisphosphonate (like fosamax, boniva, actonel) immediately before or after certain dental procedures. Dentists use local anesthetics (like Lidocaine, Benzocaine) to numb the patients but those drugs may increase the risk of heart attacks in patients with history of heart-related diseases. The risk may be double for patients who are taking other drugs that also stimulate the heart like alpha-1 receptor agonist. Unfortunately, the dentists, that I have been to, do not ask these questions to any of the patients especially when some of those patients like me filled out the medication and disease list like 5 years ago.

Furthermore, there are lot of medication that can cause discoloration of teeth, teeth grinding and loss of bone mineral density of teeth. That is why you need to know the pharmacology (side-effects, drug interactions and the mechanism of action).

I agree there are aspects of Pharmacology that are very important to dentistry... and believe me those things are learned and clinically useful. However, that's really not what we are learning in pharmacology. We learn about the minutia of a six different metal chelators or 8 different antihyperglycemics (half of which arent even used clinically by MDs) as taught by a bunch of PhDs that never even put a hand on a patient let alone know anything about dentistry. Im sorry, but these things wont be retained by any of us since we dont use it. The course should be designed to teach us the major drug catagories/most clinically relevant drugs. I believe we take a course this summer or next semester thats all about clinically relevant pharmacology... I heard its useful and I cant wait.

And not to call it bs, but I seriously doubt you had more than 1 lecture on dental anatomy. And if you did, Im sorry... thats a huge waste of your time you could have been using to study things important to your profession.

 

[browncrack]

Do you listen to the lecture or are you memorizing while you're in lecture?

This is definitely a summary of DS.

Usually memorize while in lecture. But I'm not a complete monster, I listen to the lectures for key points like "this is on the test" or "you need to know this for the the test" or "this is not on the test." If I'm feeling distracted I might take a few minutes break and work on a sudoku. The only time I actually listen to a lecture is if I'm hung over and can't force myself to memorize.

 

[DrReo]

Usually memorize while in lecture. But I'm not a complete monster, I listen to the lectures for key points like "this is on the test" or "you need to know this for the the test" or "this is not on the test." If I'm feeling distracted I might take a few minutes break and work on a sudoku. The only time I actually listen to a lecture is if I'm hung over and can't force myself to memorize.

Efficient idea.

Half the class is sleeping while you're ortho dreamin'! 😀

 

[armorshell]

Actually, we spend great deal of time on physiology and anataomy of the mouth (including teeth).

Pharmacology is one of the most important subjects for dentists. For example, patients should not be on Bisphosphonate (like fosamax, boniva, actonel) immediately before or after certain dental procedures. Dentists use local anesthetics (like Lidocaine, Benzocaine) to numb the patients but those drugs may increase the risk of heart attacks in patients with history of heart-related diseases. The risk may be double for patients who are taking other drugs that also stimulate the heart like alpha-1 receptor agonist. Unfortunately, the dentists, that I have been to, do not ask these questions to any of the patients especially when some of those patients like me filled out the medication and disease list like 5 years ago.

Furthermore, there are lot of medication that can cause discoloration of teeth, teeth grinding and loss of bone mineral density of teeth. That is why you need to know the pharmacology (side-effects, drug interactions and the mechanism of action).

Do these things make it "One of the most important subjects for dentists?" What you just mentioned could fill a few hours of lecture. That plus pain management and antibiotic therapy (The other areas of pharmacology highly relevant to dentistry) could be extensively covered in less than half a quarter.

Pharmacology is certainly important, and moreso if you're going into say, OMFS where you deal with general anesthesia and more compromised patients, but the things people are complaining about in this thread (Learning minutia about dozens of medications that haven't been used in 30+ years) aren't particularly important to dentistry at all. That's why they're complaining about them.

This is what you call rigorous courses?? Try taking pharmacology, virology, pharmacokinetics, medicinal chemistry and therapeutics at the same time.

Yeah, that sure would suck, having to memorize a bunch of things. Luckily for you, memorizing things is easy. Now go get yourself an opaque pint-sized glass. Glue a grain of rice to the bottom. Now try and write your name on it with perfectly legible penmanship, looking at it in a mirror. You'll be graded mercilessly.

I know which one I would rather do.

 

[crazy_sherm]

Yeah, that sure would suck, having to memorize a bunch of things. Luckily for you, memorizing things is easy. Now go get yourself an opaque pint-sized glass. Glue a grain of rice to the bottom. Now try and write your name on it with perfectly legible penmanship, looking at it in a mirror. You'll be graded mercilessly.

I know which one I would rather do.

Yeah, you would probably just drill a big ass hole in the bottom of the glass, take out the grain of rice, and try to cover the hole with a piece of string that just falls out in a day.

 

[lotexigeus]

Thanks for clearing that up greham.

 

[DrReo]

Thanks for clearing that up greham.

As stated above, thank you greham for the semi-permeable definition.

Can PharmD prescribe drugs? 😀

 

[achilles2]

You learn the classic drugs of pharmacology (even the ones we don't use significantly anymore like reserpine) or the ones we never use in practice such as tetrodotoxin because they helped elucidate the mechanisms of cell biology.

Pharmacology is really an exercise in fundimental cell biology, sure memorizing a laundry list of drugs is no fun but its still an important area to appriciate. It really helps reinforce our fundimental understanding of how life works.


Education is key! If you want the luxury of autonomy esp when dealing with anesthesia you have to earn it. Pretty soon DDS's will be doing IV anesthesia after taking a few post grad credits, its an insult to our field if a few people abuse there autonomy and kill a few people and end up in court and bring flak to the entire field.