AIDS FOR LEARNING DRUGS
1. A spreadsheet allowing you to group the drugs in logical units
I found it a lot easier to learn the drugs as groups, rather than rote learn one drug at a time. In order not to have to learn a random collection of facts for each drug, I tried to categorise all available information in table format. It’s perhaps not the most graphically appealing, but I found it provided a good overview and starting point. You are welcome to download the spreadsheet and make any changes or add to it as you wish.
CLICK TO EXPAND: The Drug Spreadsheet
Here is a movie to explain how to use the spreadsheet:
(for best quality, click on the YouTube button in the bottom right corner to open the movie in a new window, then click on the cogwheel icon and set the resolution to 720p, then view as full screen video.)
Here is the spreadsheet itself. Please click to download:
2. A drug learning program to help you test yourself on your Mac, iPhone or iPad.
It can get pretty boring to have to commit such a large amount of information to memory. Many people remember things better when another person asks them questions, but that’s very time consuming. This section shows you a computer program which can grill you about 2nd year pharmacology drugs whenever and wherever you want, without having to rely on your friends… 😉
CLICK TO EXPAND: A Program to Help You Learn the Drugs
In our case, the program can be adapted to contain the drug name and a definition of the drug target and working mechanism. I used the spreadsheet above to export this information and created a ProVoc file of all the pharmacology drugs, plus some more information on other pharmacology facts. You can download my Pharmacology ProVoc file here: ProVoc Vocabulary List of Pharmacology Drugs (1170) (you've got to unzip the file)
Here is a movie on how it all works:
ProVoc can also be used on your iPhone or iPad using various Apps. I have worked with iVocabulary by Christian Beer, available here for both iPhone and iPad, either for free as a lighter version, or for sale as the full version. I paid for the iPad version and have not regretted it.
And a final tip for using the Pharmacology ProVoc file on your iPad: if you can't manage to open the file with the App, try opening it from the web-based version of your e-mail client rather than from the Mail App itself.
Now you can start learning the drugs. Just a few minutes of practice every day and you should not have any problems come exam time. Good luck! :-)
3. Some overviews to learn groups of drugs: Inflammation, Antibiotics, Antiprotozoals
Here are a few overviews of drugs that helped me to learn them by heart. Unfortunately only for a very limited number of drugs, but better than nothing.)