TikvahPharmacy| compiled by t.

me/fikreabgirma
How to Study
Pharmacology
Are you having trouble
selecting the best medicine for
your patient? Is it getting
difficult to recall all the drugs
along with their various dosages
and frequencies? How do you
even order all these
medications? What happens if
you pair one drug with another?
·

February 29, 2024

Table of Contents
 #1 – Know your Physiology
 #2 – Study your Patients
 #3 – Study by Class
 #4 – Use Visual Cues
 #5 – Prioritize the First Line Drugs
 #6 – Mnemonics
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What is Pharmacology? It’s the study of how

drugs interact with the body and how the
body responds to the drug.

It sounds complicated and, in some ways, it

is. As a doctor, you’ll be qualified to
prescribe these medications to patients so,
even though it’s a tough course, mastering
pharmacology is a must.

So how are you supposed to pass

pharmacology and memorize all those
mechanisms, doses, and frequencies? Well,
it’s difficult and there’s no perfect way to
learn Pharmacology. So, we have some
pharmacology study tips to help you if you
feel stuck in the sea of medications that all
look the same.

#1 – Know your
Physiology
One of the most common questions asked in
Pharmacology is the mechanism of action
(MOA) of a drug. 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.

The body has many receptors. In physiology,

you’ll learn what each receptor does to the
various organs. 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.

For example, beta receptors play a role in

your sympathetic nervous system which, in
turn, affects various systems of your body.
Why is that important to know?

Beta blockers are used for more than

vasodilation. When you block your
sympathetic nervous system through beta
blockers, you block it for other organs apart
from the vessels. 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. 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.
#2 – Study your
Patients

Your patients are your best

source of learning.

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.

Invest yourself in the stories of your patients.

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?

Always try to answer those questions when

reading your patient’s history and course. 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.

Also, it’s not just your patients you can learn

from. When I had my clinic and pharmacy
rotations, I would go around the pharmacy,
going through the inventory. There, I would
remember what drug preparations are
available for my patients, and the dosages
that they come in. So, make the most out of
your rotations!

#3 – Study by Class
Drugs are divided into classes. These classes
are usually determined by their purpose.

 Antimuscarinics
 Alpha-blockers
 Antihistamines
 Serotonin-Uptake Receptor Inhibitors
 …and the list goes on.

Most drug classes can point you towards the

mode of action of a drug. The best way to
learn them is to organize them by flowcharts,
mapping, and other ways to organize visual
information. Once you have the
classifications down, most of the modes of
action are easy to determine.

Another thing you should study within these

drug classes are the suffixes the medications
use.

For 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.). However,
not all medications of the same class will
have the same suffixes, so be careful.

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#4 – Use Visual Cues

As a visual learner, using visual cues has
worked best for me. It’s easy for short-term
memorization and it even helps you recall
those tougher drug names and complicated
modes of action. You can create a story in
your head or a picture of a situation, if that
helps you remember better. This can work for
memorizing which drugs are in which class,
their side effects, or what makes them
particularly special.

For example, a common picture I have in my

head of organophosphate toxicity is a person
excreting everything out of any orifice they
have. Increased salivation, lacrimation,
diarrhea, vomiting, urination, etc. It sounds
gross, but the weirder it is, the more
memorable!

#5 – Prioritize the
First Line Drugs
Of course, what you learn in pharmacology is
useless when you don’t know how to apply it
in practice. Every country has different
standards of treatment, and even hospitals
have their own biograms that can change
your first line of antibiotics. You need to
know which drugs should be at the forefront
of your mind when you hear a particular
disease.

For example, when you’re considering a

patient with pneumonia, you want to think of
the most common microbe, which
is Streptococcus pneumoniae. So even
without waiting for the cultures, you can start
antibiotics that cover Gram positive bacteria.
As such, that would make your first line
choice one of the Penicillins, maybe
Amoxicillin or Ampicillin, depending on
your standard practices and the specific
characteristics of your patient.

Since these are the type of drugs you’ll be

prescribing the most often, you need to know
their side effects and drug-to-drug
interactions. So even if you forget the effects
of the other drugs, in practice, you’ll at least
remember the ones that you’ll be prescribing
to most of your patients.

#6 – Mnemonics
The use of mnemonics has helped medical
students survive for a long time. We have
mnemonics for pretty much anything that
needs to be remembered because it’s good
for short term memory. However, it’s not
very effective in the long-run as many
mnemonics can be forgotten and they’re not
memorable for every student.

As such, I wouldn’t always

recommend this method,
especially when it’s more
effective to just learn them
through physiology.
However, some mnemonics do stick,
particularly those you’ve made yourself or
those that make sense for what they’re used
for. For example, common tocolytics can be
remembered through the mnemonic “It’s Not
My Time,” referring to Indomethacin,
Nifedipine, Magnesium Sulfate, and
Terbutaline. You would remember that these
are tocolytics because it’s not the uterus’
time yet to contract!