Nursing Student Coach
Join Lauren Chapnick, RN, as she takes you through the journey of becoming a nurse! On Nursing Student Coach, Lauren, who is a new nursing professional, along with her knowledgeable guests will give you the tools to succeed in your nursing career. They will discuss ways to reduce anxiety and stress, share tips on studying and preparing for your NCLEX, and so much more - you won't be alone in this adventure! New episodes air every Thursday.
Nursing Student Coach
Mastering Pharmacology: Turning Fear into Fun with Dr. Christopher Hanley
Got pharmacology on your nursing school syllabus? Dreading the prospect? Fear not! We've got Dr. Christopher Hanley, an expert with over a decade of teaching pharmacology and pathophysiology, spilling the beans on how to turn this intimidating course into an engaging and fun learning experience. He discusses essential strategies for success, such as effective time management, focusing on drug root words, and the importance of proactive class participation.
Med errors are a nightmare scenario for any nurse. And as future nurses, it's our responsibility to prevent them. How, you ask? We've got you covered. Learn the five imperative rights every nurse should grasp before administering a drug. Discover why it's crucial to be assertive, questioning orders that seem misprescribed or wrongly dispensed. Plus, we're stressing on the significance of educating patients about their medication and why confidence in your knowledge is key to being a successful nursing student. Don't miss this enlightening chat with Dr. Hanley that is sure to enhance your nursing school journey and future nursing practice.
Nursing school is a wild ride, but that doesn't mean you have to run and hide when the going gets tough. Don't leave your stress undiagnosed. You gotta call the nursing student coach. Real-life tips from a registered nurse, in school and out. She's seen the worst. Now, without further ado, yeah, here is your host. It's the nursing student coach.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody and welcome to Nursing Student Coach. My name is Lauren Chapnick and I am your host, and today's episode we are talking about pharmacology and what a class this is. Am I right? Pharmacology is known as the hardest, maybe the most intimidating class in nursing school, but it's one of the most important. So how can we be successful and how can we even make it fun? Because that's what I figured out when I took this class.
Speaker 2:After a couple weeks of being completely overwhelmed and a deer in headlights, I said I have to find a way to make this class fun. I have to make studying fun, because otherwise you know you're gonna lose your mind looking at some of these things. So not only on today's episode am I going to be sharing my tools and strategies for what I did to be successful, but we have a very special guest. His name is Dr Christopher Hanley and he has been teaching pharmacology and pathophysiology To nursing students for over 10 years. So if there's anybody who can give you some advice, some insight as to how to wrap your head around this class, it is Dr Hanley. So I'm excited for a great conversation today On really how can students best prepare for this class and what can they do in order to be the most successful that they can be in pharmacology. So I would like to welcome Dr Christopher Hanley. Hi, Dr Hanley, thank you so much for joining us and welcome.
Speaker 2:Hi Lauren thank you for having me. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how it came to be that you started teaching nurses future nurses pharmacology?
Speaker 3:Sure. So a little bit background on myself. Growing up, I always knew that I wanted to go into some healthcare based profession. I went to St John's University for my formD and I worked in the hospital in the beginning and then transition to community practice and then eventually long-term care. And then at that point I had an opportunity to teach at Malawi University for the pharmacy technician program and I was also offered to teach R&R Refresher. That's where I started teaching that population of students and I really love teaching nursing students. They're engaging, they have energy.
Speaker 2:So basically, you realize that nurses are awesome and you wanted to work with them.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:So, okay, you know pharmacology is known to be the hardest class. I know I was so intimidated when I first started and started to wrap my head around all of the material. It's just so daunting. How do you suggest that students set themselves up for success in a pharmacology slash pathophysiology class? What would be your best advice?
Speaker 3:So, to highlight what you said, that is true it is one of the most overwhelming courses because it's the first course that you encounter in that sequence on your path with getting your RN. What I would say the biggest thing that students need to understand is time management. The level of commitment that's involved in this major Time management is so important, and this doesn't only apply to my course. This applies to anything med, surge, foundations, health assessment, anything that's in that nursing program. Time management is important. It's very easy to get off track, but if you establish a schedule, put down what you have to do, your tasks, make sure that you have something every day that you're completing. Time management, I would say would be the first thing. Second thing is do not get overwhelmed when it comes to studying medication. So a big thing that I teach my students is to focus on the root words.
Speaker 3:It's not the study individual drug names, but if you can recall the root word for a particular drug class, because most of these classes do have a root word all the drugs in that class all have the same mechanism of action, the same adverse effects, contraindications, drug interactions. So relate to the class as a whole, as opposed to studying individual and memorizing individual drug names.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would agree with that. I know you were my pharmacology teacher let's just put it out there. And I know you gave us on day one a list of the root words and I started by making flashcards of those root words. Like, all your cephalosporins are going to have CEP. So if you can recognize that and just start to kind of put that, put one in one together, it's so helpful and you don't have to do it all at once. You can do five a day or just study them when you're in line at the grocery store or whatever it is. I think what also intimidates so many people is there's a giant textbook and then there's lectures that are so long. It's like time management is good, but where do I place my effort If I have two hours to study? I think what a lot of students struggle with and I did it first was what do I even study? You know it's sort of like all of these things are in front of you. What do I even do? How do I do this?
Speaker 3:So I would say, in addition to time management and you know the hack, we're looking at the root word. The biggest thing too when it comes to farm and patho is coming to class prepared. So I record majority of my content and I do recommend that my students listen to it before they come to class. Now, you might not have that with every single course Everybody teaches their courses differently but if a student does have access to those resources, use it to your advantage, because if you're listening to the content before or even reading the chapter when you come to class and you're being lectured on that topic, it's not the first time you're hearing the information, so it won't seem so foreign and overwhelming. I would also recommend that students not only come prepared but be engaged during class.
Speaker 3:So class lecture really is your time to ask questions, clarify with the professor if there's something that you don't understand, and I think that a lot of students have this notion that professors don't want to be asked questions. That's not true. I very much welcome questions. I like an engaging lecture because most likely if you're asking that question, there's another student in that. 100% Exact questions you. This is what you're here for is to learn.
Speaker 3:Yeah there's a resource Exactly always ask questions.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I know, and I think what I did to make pharmacology fun is, by the time I got to the second exam I said this is nuts like. I'm not just gonna look at slides and Try to memorize them, I'm gonna try to make it fun. So you know what I did.
Speaker 2:I started making up characters for for all the drugs. For example, I know there's a drug called clopidogrel, which, clavix, is an anti-platelet, and the character that I made up for that is a Dog and his name is cloppy dog and he's got these big ears and he's got a blue ribbon on that says I'm a pro, because it's a pro drug that has to be metabolized in order for it to work. And then he he's also saying things like I make all the characters say things like Don't quit me abruptly and and things like that. And he's like saying whoof, whoof, I'm an anti-platelet. So it's, it's a visual and it's something that it sticks and you're gonna remember it. When you're in clinical and you see clopidogrel, you might think, oh, clopy dog, I remember that and you, you associate it. So when I started to see that it was working and I was doing well on exams and remembering drugs and clinical things like that.
Speaker 2:I said I want to share this with other people's and then we started talking and we are now developing this new study tool, and farm simple is the name of our product. Well, our product is farm simple RN and it is geared specifically for nursing students and aspiring nurses studying further NCLEX. So if you want to know more about that, you can go to nursing student coach comm there's a link or farm simple comm and join our mailing list for updates, and all of our links to social media are up there as well. That will be coming in the coming months and I'm so excited to put that out there because I think it's gonna help so many Future nurses just to kind of make farm fun, which and simple, which it should exactly and just immerse yourself in that yeah get comfortable with it and Enjoy it, because this is.
Speaker 3:You chose this career path, so you might as well make it fun, right? You know everybody absorbs things differently. Some students are visual learners, some students need to read and I do think that a lot of the students will benefit from farm, simple Because a lot of students are visual learners. They like to look at videos and the characters make it fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what would you say if there's a student out there who Hasn't taken farm yet, but they are about to. It's coming up in their next semester? Do you think there's anything that they could do to prepare in advance, to be ready for this class?
Speaker 3:Yes, a hundred percent. So in order for a student to understand patho, they need a good foundation in AMP.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:AMP, I would say is very important to be comfortable with before you get into patho farm med terminology. And Again, the AMP really is the foundation of all this, because if you don't understand how the body works under normal conditions, healthy conditions, how are you going to understand a disease process? And if you don't understand the disease process, you're not going to understand exactly how these drugs are being used to target and manage a Patient's, a certain condition.
Speaker 2:Yes, amp is so crucial. So I would say the same thing if you're about to take Pharmacology or pathophysiology, take out your AMP notes, you know, and just kind of take, take a look and make sure you look through all your body systems and you're refreshed on how they work, because nursing school, all the classes layer on top of each other.
Speaker 3:I've hold learning.
Speaker 2:Yes, but it started already before you even started nursing school in your prerequisites. If, if you're in an accelerated program or if you're in a traditional four-year, you know your first year, your foundational year of all your sciences, is so, so important. So don't blow that off, don't just squeeze by like know that that's very, very important to success in farm, for sure. I also think like pharmacology is not just a one and done. It's not like you have to just get through this class, pass it and then, whoo, I'm done. It just keeps coming and coming. It comes up in every class and of course you know in clinical, but in your career, no-transcript. You pass your NCLEX and then you're out there working and these drugs are, you're administering them every day. So it's not something you can memorize and let go.
Speaker 3:If you take a look on NCLEXcom, you can pull up the test plan. You could see that up to 60% of the exam is based on formacology.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Physiological adaption. So PATHL Farm really has a major role as far as NCLEX especially with the next genavid has come out. You know you have to understand that it's you're out of the classroom but now you're in a clinical setting. The biggest thing I would say is that med errors that's why you, that's the biggest thing we talk about in formacology preventing med errors and understanding why these drugs are given, because, as you know, your five rights before you.
Speaker 2:I think it's 11 now, but we'll see what. The basic five.
Speaker 3:But before you give that dose or that drug to the patient for the first time, you should be able to recall those rights in your head.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:We'll write patient, write drug, write dose, write route. And you have to understand why is that drug being given to that particular patient, because a lot of these drugs have multiple uses, right. And if you don't understand why it's being given for that patient especially if it's something being ordered only PRN as needed Well what situation warrants you giving that drug PRN? And the other thing to really highlight is that nurses really are the last line of defense. You are the patient's number one advocate, because something could have been ordered incorrectly by the provider, whether that be a physician, a PA or nurse practitioner then it goes to pharmacy. They don't catch an error and now the drug is in your hands before it goes into the patient. So this is what I really would also tell graduate nurses is that do question any order that you feel there is an error, because you're the last line of defense and it could have been ordered wrong and then dispensed wrong. So nurses definitely play a role in preventing med errors because they catch them.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I think I know I've been told in my job. Don't be afraid to speak up, call pharmacy and clarify, make sure, question the order, talk to the provider before you administer it to the patient If you have any question in your mind, because that's your licenses on the line too. You're constantly thinking about your license as a working nurse, you know.
Speaker 3:You put in that time to study and pass those courses and now you have license. So it really is not only it's obviously to protect the patient, right, that's always our priority, but it's always to protect yourself.
Speaker 2:Yes it's both. And also, just a side note, you're going to have patients and patients families who are going to question every single medicine that you're giving. They're going to ask you well, why are you having that? What's this? It doesn't look like the one that I take at home, and so if you can explain the path of a drug to a patient in a way that they understand it, you're going to be leaps and bounds ahead and it's only going to help you.
Speaker 2:So all of these courses that you're taking in nursing school, it's to eventually be put into practice so that you can apply it and talk to patients and educate them. Agreed, because we're educators. Nurses are educators to our patients and we want to empower them and make sure they know what their take is what they're taking. So how are they going to know if we don't know the ins and outs? And especially, as you mentioned, drugs can be administered for a bunch of different reasons. You know it could be a seizure medication in one instance and a nerve pain medication in another. So why are you giving it Right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, or if you use for bipolar disorder or a lot of your seizure drugs, which we covered today. Actually they can be used for bipolar disorder or, as you said, neuropathy. So understand the locations, because these have multiple indications.
Speaker 2:Right, I fully agree. If you would just have one piece of advice, one takeaway to nursing students in general to be successful in nursing school, if they could walk away from this episode knowing one thing to be successful, what do you think that would be?
Speaker 3:Be confident, be confident. I think that oftentimes students lose their confidence, especially if they don't do as well or perform as well on an exam as they expected. Don't let your confidence go down, and then I would really highlight that you know this, you do. It's back there somewhere.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:So, when you're going through these questions, before even look at the choices, think about what you know about that topic, what you learned Because it is, it is there. You just have to take a second and think about it.
Speaker 2:And don't second guess yourself.
Speaker 3:Right, that's a big thing I'll tell you that I do see a lot of students struggle with is we'll do an exam and then we'll review it the following week and then the students can see what they got incorrect, right?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:And a lot of the times I'll have students come up at the end and say I picked the right choice, but then I second guessed myself and I changed it because they didn't listen to me. Your gut is right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your gut instinct is usually right. Unless you're 100% sure to change your answer, don't change it. I agree that's. That's a really, really good advice to be confident because you've put in all the time to study and just trust yourself.
Speaker 3:Give yourself more credit, yes, than you are, yes, 100%. Confidence plays a big role in performing well.
Speaker 2:And what would you say to somebody who failed their first exam? They think they studied really hard, they thought they knew it and they just didn't. They didn't get the minimum passing grade. What would you say to somebody like that, who's feeling down and out?
Speaker 3:Well, first, I would ask the student how much time did you put into studying?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Because we can all say that we studied. And when it comes to nursing school, I think that students need to realize it's not that you can prepare for an exam three days before. It requires time and not to be discouraged if on that first exam you don't do well, especially for first semester students, because you're learning what works for you. And for the first exam the method that you chose might not have worked out, and that's okay, because there's plenty of opportunity for the rest of this semester to find another method that works for you. And then I would also give the piece of advice that group study is really helpful. Yes, you're going to study on your own, but if you have a support system because a lot of students have this notion that all right, I'm in competition with everybody.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:You're not in competition with anybody. You're in competition with yourself.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 3:If anything, you're there to help your fellow cohort and getting into a study group really helps identify the learning gaps, because something that you may have picked up I didn't pick up and vice versa. And when you start to have a discussion about the medications and why they're being used and the path of the disease process, when you start to verbalize it and, almost you know, teach it to somebody else, it really starts to stick.
Speaker 2:Yes, but choose wisely. Don't choose a group that's going to distract you, or don't choose a group where people will come unprepared and you're spending time playing catch up. Everybody should come knowing the material and there to help each other. So it is good, with the right combination of people and with the right intent. Agreed. I personally did not benefit from studying in a group, but I can absolutely see the benefit, and it just goes to show to you that everybody's different and you have to choose what's right for you. What may work for one person may not work for another, and I think when somebody fails an exam too, there's such a there's a level of shame and embarrassment that comes along with it, and they just want to ignore it. I think my biggest advice when somebody fails and I did a whole episode on this is to face it and own it and say, yep, I failed. And now what do I do?
Speaker 3:As you've said in your podcast, because I've listened to a few of them, you know, give yourself 15 minutes to be upset about it. Yeah, but the fact is, you're going to be going to the next module. Yeah, you got to move on.
Speaker 2:You're going to try to review what you were deficient in.
Speaker 3:Don't perseverate on it. No, don't be there and let it bring your confidence down Because, again, I think confidence is the biggest thing as far as performing well, because if you believe in yourself, you're going to do well Right.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it's 100% mindset. You know that, they know that. I think that's great.
Speaker 3:But down time and then let it go, let it go.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Got to move on because there are more exams to do. Well, and it's a learning lesson.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know, eventually this will start to click, it will come together. As we said earlier, it scaffolds Because everything you learn in PathoFarm is the foundation for MedSurge, for Returnal, for Psych, because when you arrive to those courses they're not going to go over the Patho and the disease processes or the medicine.
Speaker 2:They're going to assume that you know it.
Speaker 3:They're going to assume that you know it, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Do your best in getting that down pat first when you're in PathoFarm, before you move forward, because it will start to connect. And don't get discouraged. I agree Connection, especially when you're in the clinical setting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, take that time in clinical. Whenever you see a drug, write it down and make sure you can Teach it back to your clinical instructor, especially if there's downtime. I think there's a lot of sitting around sometimes at clinical and it could be spent looking at meds, cuz that's the time that you actually see them use every opportunity you can for as a learning experience.
Speaker 3:so if you're on clinical and you're looking at the med list and there's one drug that you don't even know what this is used for, but you learned it in pathopharm, go and look it up. Yeah and when you look something up that's active learning, it's gonna stick the next time around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're gonna, yeah, it's gonna stick, especially if you see a nurse administer that medication and you look at that patient's chart and see, oh, okay, they had a stroke, that's why they're getting this. It makes sense, like that's why they're getting this anti coagulate and this anti platelet. Okay, and you put it all together, it makes more sense. Well, dr Hanley, thank you so much for joining us. This was so helpful and for all of you future nurses out there, go to farm simple dot com and join our mailing list, because coming soon, dr Hanley and nurse Lauren will be teaming up to give you some fun pharmacology lessons, and we hope to see you all there.
Speaker 3:That's great. Thank you for having me, lauren.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thank you so much and we'll talk to you soon. Bye, bye. Well, that will do it for today. Dr Hanley, thanks again for joining us. That was fantastic. And remember to go to farm simple dot com to join our mailing list For updates on when those supplemental study tools for pharmacology to make it fun will be coming your way in the coming months. You can also go to nursing student coach dot com to join my mailing list for a weekly blast of updates, study tips, things like that, and it is my personal mission to help put more great nurses into the world. So thank you so much for listening to the show and for liking it, sharing it, rating it, reviewing it all of those things that help put the show in front of listeners who may not have found us otherwise. Until next time, I am nurse Lauren and we will see you very soon. Have an awesome day. Bye, bye.
Speaker 1:Thanks for To the nursing student coach, to the nursing student coach podcast.
