So even without waiting for the cultures, you can start antibiotics that cover Gram positive bacteria. You need to know which drugs should be at the forefront of your mind when you hear a particular disease.įor example, when you’re considering a patient with pneumonia, you want to think of the most common microbe, which is Streptococcus pneumoniae. Every country has different standards of treatment, and even hospitals have their own biograms that can change your first line of antibiotics.
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Of course, what you learn in pharmacology is useless when you don’t know how to apply it in practice. It sounds gross, but the weirder it is, the more memorable! #5 – Prioritize the First Line Drugs Increased salivation, lacrimation, diarrhea, vomiting, urination, etc. This can work for memorizing which drugs are in which class, their side effects, or what makes them particularly special.įor example, a common picture I have in my head of organophosphate toxicity is a person excreting everything out of any orifice they have. You can create a story in your head or a picture of a situation, if that helps you remember better. It’s easy for short-term memorization and it even helps you recall those tougher drug names and complicated modes of action. However, not all medications of the same class will have the same suffixes, so be careful.Īs a visual learner, using visual cues has worked best for me.
Once you have the classifications down, most of the modes of action are easy to determine.Īnother thing you should study within these drug classes are the suffixes the medications use.įor example, ACE inhibitors have -pril at the ends of their names (Captopril, Enalopril, etc.) while ARBS have -sartan at the ends of theirs (Irbesartan, Losartan, etc.). The best way to learn them is to organize them by flowcharts, mapping, and other ways to organize visual information. Most drug classes can point you towards the mode of action of a drug. These classes are usually determined by their purpose. So, make the most out of your rotations! #3 – Study by Classĭrugs are divided into classes. There, I would remember what drug preparations are available for my patients, and the dosages that they come in. When I had my clinic and pharmacy rotations, I would go around the pharmacy, going through the inventory. It may look like a list of drugs at first, but in the grand scheme of things, they’re part of a story, and that makes them important.Īlso, it’s not just your patients you can learn from. What drugs are they taking? Why are these their medications? Why did the attending discontinue a particular drug? What are possible alternatives to the patient’s current meds?Īlways try to answer those questions when reading your patient’s history and course. Invest yourself in the stories of your patients. Of course you’re there to help them, but they’re also there to help you! As you interact and manage patients, you’ll come across all kinds of medications that they have taken, are taking, and will take.
Your patients are your best source of learning. So knowing how the different parts of the body are affected by a drug can tell you not only its MOA, but also its potential side effects and contraindications. This is why you need to use selective beta blockers for patients with asthma, because their non-selective side effect is bronchoconstriction, which can worsen asthma. When you block your sympathetic nervous system through beta blockers, you block it for other organs apart from the vessels. Why is that important to know?īeta blockers are used for more than vasodilation. While it’s one thing to know the target receptor of a drug, it’s another to know what happens when it’s either activated or inhibited.įor example, beta receptors play a role in your sympathetic nervous system which, in turn, affects various systems of your body. In physiology, you’ll learn what each receptor does to the various organs. In other words, what does the drug do to your body? There are many ways to memorize the MOA of each drug, but the most effective way is to have a firm foundation in physiology. One of the most common questions asked in Pharmacology is the mechanism of action (MOA) of a drug.
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