Ep 86 Cutting Pharmacology Study Time in Half

Cutting Pharmacology Study Time in Half

Find the book here: https://geni.us/iA22iZ 

or here: https://www.audible.com/pd/B01FSR7HLE/?source_code=AUDFPWS0223189MWT-BK-ACX0-059486&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_059486_rh_us

and subscribe to TonyPharmD YouTube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/tonypharmd

Here is the Link to my Pharmacy Residency Courses:  residency.teachable.com

In this episode I go over why it takes so much longer to study for pharmacology than other classes and what to do about it. 

Auto Generated Transcript:

Welcome to the Memorizing Pharmacology podcast. I’m Tony Guerra, pharmacist and author of the Memorizing Pharmacology book series, bringing you mnemonics, cases, and advice for succeeding in pharmacology. Sign up for the email list at memorizingfarm.com to get your free suffixes cheat sheet or find our mobile-friendly self-paced online pharmacology review course at residency.teachable.com/p/mobile. Let’s get started with the show.

Okay, welcome to the Memorizing Pharmacology podcast. I just wanted to teach you how to cut your pharmacology studying in half. So before I get started, online pharmacology class is still available. We opened up a second section because it looks like the first section might fill. So just go to DMACC, DMACC and then pharmacology PHR185 is the name of the class or the class number.

Okay, so what I want to do is just give you a quick example. So I live in North Ankeny and there is a grocery store HyVee that we go to and then there is also a South Ankeny HyVee. When you go to the North Ankeny HyVee, this is the one I know, this is the one I go to all the time, the groceries are on the left of the building. If I need something that is not grocery, I know it’s on the right of the building. But if my kids say, okay, well Dad we’re out of milk and orange juice and cheese or something like that, I know to go in the right part of the building. I know to go to the back refrigerator section and if it’s just milk I can just go to the registers and I can go to the back right. I can go get what I need and come right back out and be done. On the other Ankeny one, I would have to go all the way to the left side, go all the way to the back left and then come out in the left door.

So I just want to give you that quick example because when we talk about pharmacology and why I wrote the book Memorizing Pharmacology: A Relaxed Approach and you know somebody just put a comment on my YouTube video, hey you know thanks for cutting down my study time. That’s the whole point of mnemonics is to make it so that your time is much more efficient whether using the second edition or the first edition it doesn’t matter.

But when people say oh okay well it’s just about the endings and the suffixes and things like that, that is incomplete and I want to show you why. Okay so besides the endings and suffixes and things like that, what I’m looking at right now is you can go online look on Amazon and this is the free preview of the book and when you look at GI for example and we’re going to start with too much acid.

The first thing you would give somebody or something somebody would take is they just go to over-the-counter and just get some antacids and they take those and that would reduce the amount of acid in their stomach. Okay, the next thing they would go to is an H2 blocker. That is a little bit more potent, it’s going to last quite a bit longer than an antacid. It can be taken on a regular basis maybe two weeks if somebody is having chronic acid or chronic GERD or chronic reflux.

And then if they were to go into a situation where they were actually going to be treated with antibiotics and an acid reducer, it’s more likely you would get a proton pump inhibitor. Now yes I talk about the endings. The generic antacids are actually the same chemical name as generic names kind of unique in the way they do that. And what we do is we put calcium carbonate and magnesium hydroxide one is constipating one causes diarrhea we put those opposite each other and we put them in a pair.

Then for histamines we have cimetidine which is the first one that came out has all of the side effects and then famotidine which has many fewer side effects which is the newer one and then it has that new Zantac brand name in addition to Pepcid.

And then we go to our proton pump inhibitors esomeprazole and omeprazole you know the S and R if you need to get into that in your particular pharmacology class where you have the right hand and left hand but more important thing is that it is in an order.

So in same way that I would go into HyVee in North Ankeny HyVee and if I need to go get dairy and maybe a card for someone I would go into right side of store and then I would go into back right of store but then if I know I need to get like a frozen pizza or something I would know I’d go to middle of store and then if I need to go get some dessert or something like that back left of store If I needed to get some crab rangoons, you know, just a snack or something like that, they would be on the left of the store. And then maybe some Starbucks on the way out, left of the store. But if I go to the South Ankeny HyVee, that actually reverses almost. Because if I need to get dairy, it’s on the left hand side of the store. The Starbucks is in the middle of the store on the left side. And so maybe I would start there, kind of get that thing to go in your cart. And then I would put the pizza and the milk and everything and I would go get it on the left side of the store.

So what I’m telling you is that yes, okay, those prefixes, infixes and suffixes are helpful. But the more important thing is that you have a list that’s going to have things in order. And that order is how you’re supposed to learn it. And the order you’re going to want to learn it in is the one where, okay, what is the least invasive medication that we’re going to use? What is the next least invasive and so forth until you get to the very strongest medicine? Or with beta blockers, first generation, second generation, third generation. Calcium channel blockers, non-dihydropyridines versus dihydropyridines. Okay, when you talk about antihistamines, it’s going to be which ones are the non-sedating versus the sedating. The sedating came first and then the non-sedating came second. First generation, second generation.

What I’ve done is, the reason this can cut your time in half is that I’ve already done it for you. I’ve already told you this is what has allowed students to be successful in the past already. They’ve already found that this is the order that makes it so much easier for them. This is the order that makes sense for them. And for you visual learners, this is the one that you want to draw it and you want to draw this drug first, this drug second, this drug third. Or with something like the RAAS, the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, you would of course put something that is going to affect angiotensin II like an ACE first and then an ARB second because that’s what the order is going to be in the picture. Or with diuretics, you’re going to start with the glomerulus and you’re going to start with mannitol and then you’re going to go down the loop of Henle like a water slide. You’re going to come back up and you’re going to use furosemide and then you’re going to go to the distal convoluted tubule into hydrochlorothiazide and then you’re going to go into the collecting duct where you have spironolactone or eplerenone, those potassium-sparing diuretics.

There is an order for everything and the reason why it’s taking you so long to figure out pharmacology is because you are figuring out the order for yourself. You are reinventing the wheel. I’m telling you I’ve already done this. I’ve been teaching this for 15 years. The reason why so many people want to use this book and I want to say it’s close to almost 10 000 a year that will use this book is because I’ve already put everything in order for you.

And yes I get it, you’re gonna get some maybe some of your lectures are going to have like study notes for the exam and things like that but the question is and you can figure this out really quickly does the order match the order that I’ve put them in? Okay when you look at GI does it look like this is in an order from least to worst something like that?

Alright well if you got questions [email protected] but again the easiest way to do this use videos on YouTube or whether you get book Audible lets you get it for free if you’ve never had one with them before but if you are not doing things in an order that you’ve already established or somebody has established for you then you’re probably making it twice as hard as it needs to be. You’re spending twice as much time on pharmacology than you need to.

And I assure you it will make it so much easier because once you make this class take up less of your time you can spend more time on other classes and then you feel so much better because once you’ve made it so that okay now I’ve got enough time to do everything that’s when anxiety starts to go away. That’s when you start to feel confident. That’s when you’re helping your classmates and when you’re helping your classmates you’re learning it even better.

And we get on this kind of wheel of just success where it just builds on each other because now you’re helping other people learn and you totally remember it. Alright Tony the pharmacist gmail.com if you’ve got questions otherwise I will talk to you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the Memorizing Pharmacology podcast. You can find episodes, cheat sheets and more at memorizingfarm.com. Again you can sign up for the email list at memorizingfarm.com to get your free suffixes cheat sheet or find our mobile-friendly self-paced online pharmacology review course at residency.teachable.com/p/mobile. Thanks again for listening.

Like to learn more?

Find my book here: https://geni.us/iA22iZ

or here: https://www.audible.com/pd/B01FSR7HLE/?source_code=AUDFPWS0223189MWT-BK-ACX0-059486&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_059486_rh_us

and subscribe to my YouTube Channel TonyPharmD here: https://www.youtube.com/c/tonypharmd

Here is the Link to my Pharmacy Residency Courses:  residency.teachable.com