To review, or not to review: that is the question

[PharmDstudent]

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If all goes well this semester, then I will be starting rotations at the end of June. My question to you is: should I review most of my old lecture notes, especially Therapeutics, Kinetics, and Calculations? I'm thinking of even reviewing Pharmacology and Med. Chem to solidify my knowledge of drug classes and interactions.


I have a feeling that a good refresher would be helpful, because I didn't enjoy Kinetics and Therapeutics, which will probably be pretty important during "clinical" rotations. Those classes gave me a lot of anxiety, and I was always nauseous while studying for and taking the exams. It took/takes everything out of me just to sit down and study and then take the exam. (I still have a Therapeutics class, by the way.) Since I don't have to look at the notes anymore after the end of the semester, I won't and haven't, which might be a bad thing if the material is worthwhile and useful during rotations.

 

[Glycerin]

If all goes well this semester, then I will be starting rotations at the end of June. My question to you is: should I review most of my old lecture notes, especially Therapeutics, Kinetics, and Calculations? I'm thinking of even reviewing Pharmacology and Med. Chem to solidify my knowledge of drug classes and interactions.


I have a feeling that a good refresher would be helpful, because I didn't enjoy Kinetics and Therapeutics, which will probably be pretty important during "clinical" rotations. Those classes gave me a lot of anxiety, and I was always nauseous while studying for and taking the exams. It took/takes everything out of me just to sit down and study and then take the exam. (I still have a Therapeutics class, by the way.) Since I don't have to look at the notes anymore after the end of the semester, I won't and haven't, which might be a bad thing if the material is worthwhile and useful during rotations.

If you feel it's important to you, then refresh. It won't hurt. However, if you have a large amount of time off, enjoy it while you can, because rotations won't allow for much time to do nothing, and after graduation you'll be working.

Before each rotation, I just browsed over the relevant material and updated guidelines. And, I read journals and did other topic reviews during rotations, also. There's always going to be something you don't know or don't remember, but then there will be things you remember that you didn't know you would. 🙂

 

[njac]

why did therapeutics bother you so much? It was probably my favorite class in pharmacy school - and the one I did the best in - because it was actually relevant.

It's a ton of info but once you learn it, it's easier to recall. Vs looking it up to learn it.

 

[PharmDstudent]

why did therapeutics bother you so much? It was probably my favorite class in pharmacy school - and the one I did the best in - because it was actually relevant.

It's a ton of info but once you learn it, it's easier to recall. Vs looking it up to learn it.

It might be relevant to you, but it's not very relevant to me. I'm not really sure why, but what we are taught from the text and lectures is not very applicable.
Louisiana is a horse of different color... I'll give you that. I don't see the majority of things being prescribed according to the guidelines, or at least as the guidelines suggest. For example, my boss rarely sees colchicine being prescribed "until diarrhea occurs". The scripts are usually such and such qd.



The way that they test students in Therapeutics is brutal. Depending on the professor, if you missed one thing that was said in class, then you could have missed a question or more on that instructor's part of the exam.
I don't know about your program, but our DSM classes are worth 5 credits a piece. So... that's sitting in a class for 1 hour every day during the week, which isn't too bad, or 2.5 hours twice a week in the afternoon until 5:30pm or so.

I don't want to sound ugly, but most of our Therapeutics professors take all of the fun and joy out of learning disease management. I usually have to study a stack of papers that's an inch thick per exam. There are slides upon slides upon slides to study, and their questions could come from anywhere on those slides or anything they talked about in class- seriously. For example, on one test, we were asked which amino acid was involved in the sickle cell mutation, because the professor mentioned it in class.

The application-based learning isn't the greatest either. Instead of giving lots of examples and miniature cases to work on for each section, we might get a few sample questions in class, and then only one part of a case will come from each topic. It's like there's no way to "get to the meat" of the information, because "everything" (except dosing sometimes) is important. It's information overload, if you will, without a filter.

 

[rxlynn]

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The way that they test students in Therapeutics is brutal. Depending on the professor, if you missed one thing that was said in class, then you could have missed a question or more on that instructor's part of the exam.
I don't know about your program, but our DSM classes are worth 5 credits a piece. So... that's sitting in a class for 1 hour every day during the week, which isn't too bad, or 2.5 hours twice a week in the afternoon until 5:30pm or so.

.

I don't disagree with you at all about the information overload, but your discussion of how much time you are in class really hit my funny bone. You should be thankful that you didn't go to a school with a block schedule. My normal therapeutics class schedule looks like this right now:
M class 8-12, Tu exam, W 8-12, Th 8-12. F 8-12. Or sometimes, they will be 9-12, depending on how long the block lasts. So, you have a major test every week, and typically that will cover 13-16 hours of lecture from the previous week.

 

[PharmDstudent]

I don't disagree with you at all about the information overload, but your discussion of how much time you are in class really hit my funny bone. You should be thankful that you didn't go to a school with a block schedule. My normal therapeutics class schedule looks like this right now:
M class 8-12, Tu exam, W 8-12, Th 8-12. F 8-12. Or sometimes, they will be 9-12, depending on how long the block lasts. So, you have a major test every week, and typically that will cover 13-16 hours of lecture from the previous week.

I hear ya.

This class is in addition to all of our other classes (which may or may not be the case for you too), and the lightest semester that I've had so far is this semester, which is 15 hours + IPPE3 with no lab(s), because I already took an elective as a P1.

IPPE is always done during the semester, never over the summer unless you have to make-up missed hours and want to pay the extra tuition, so that takes away from studying and the like.

Our Therapeutics tests are not weekly. Weekly would be nice, perhaps. We only have 3 tests/semester. This semester is a little different, because the course coordinator scheduled 4 tests/semester. So in effect, we'll have anywhere from 10 hours per exam to 25 or more hours per exam depending on how the course is set-up and where the exams fall... in addition to everything else.

People fail DSM I routinely. For example, I heard a guy talking to a professor last Thursday, while I was studying for my DSM test, about how he had failed the first 2 exams in that class. He said that he had studied and went to the case application reviews that are offered as supplemental (*this is the first year that these are being offered), but he still failed them.


(I can't put my finger on it, but there is something "off" about our DSM courses. Perhaps that's why I have such an aversion to the idea of "clinical" pharmacy. There's a bad taste in my mouth...)