Newsletter How to Study Pharmacology? What is Pharmacology? Pharmacology is the study about drugs. In pharmacology, we study the mechanical, physical, and biochemical changes inside our body that occur either due to a drug or resulting form the reactions to drugs inside our body. Pharmacology is a subject that you must understand the process and not to memorize by heart,  like memorizing drug names. So to study Pharmacology, you should make sure that you know basic medical sciences like anatomy, physiology and biochemistry, because they are connected to each other. However, I would say that Pharmacology is one of the most important subjects you should study if you’re a student in medicine, nursing, or any health related course dealing with human lives. Because, without knowing the drugs and pharmacology, you cannot work as a doctor or treat patients.  How to study Pharmacology? Pharmacology is one of the difficult subjects, yet interesting subject in medical school. Your knowledge in Pharmacology will help you throughout your carrier, also one day it will be lifesaving. We’ve explained all of the most effective methods to study Pharmacology for MBBS and Nursing to cut your study time in half and retain more to score highest marks in your exams.  1) Create a suitable environment to study Creating a good learning environment allows you to maximize your learning efficiency. Combination of effective time management, good reading and note taking skills, Illustration skills, creating effective test taking strategies and your hard work will give you a productive outcome. Identify all of your environmental distractions that interfere with your concentration. STARVE YOUR DISTRACTIONS, FEED YOUR FOCUS! That’s the key to success. 2) Know your basic Anatomy, Biochemistry & Physiology Remember! Anatomy, Physiology, Pharmacology and Pathology are not just for exams, they are for life. You don’t have to be a genius in such subjects, but you should know the basics to understand the clinical medicine and what happens inside the body in diseases. So if you’re going to study the Pharmacology of the drugs that act on brain in coming week, just go through your basic anatomical structure of the brain, surrounding structures and the physiology of the brain. So, when you go to lecture and your professor is talking about Pharmacological management of stroke, you will clearly understand how the drugs lyse the clot that block the cerebral artery. Download Pharmacology Books & Thousands of Medical Resources Sample of Pharmacology Essentials Flashcards eBook 3) Know teaching style of your professor! Every professor is different in their teaching style. Some may give you study notes prior to lectures, so you can have a basic idea before you go to the lecture. Some professors require students to learn by themselves using textbooks and through research. If you have such professors, you can ask your seniors to see how they studied the subject.  Some professors give you homework and assignments based on the theories that are mainly assessed in the exams. So you should focus more on such topics and related questions. 4) Collect resources to study There are actually a lot of resources available to you to make your studying endeavors easier. You should use all of the resources and a combination of learning techniques to maximize your studying effectiveness and reinforce the concepts in Pharmacology. You can take advantage of your textbooks, class handouts, reading materials, and lab material your professor provides, and also there are many Online Study Resources & Notes that are accessible to students. Textbooks: Always use standard textbooks for your studies. They provide you the highly reliable resources. Because you can clarify your doubts or read up on a chapter you’re not familiar with. Reading materials: You should always study your reading materials and notes provided by your university. Because they will provide notes from chapters focusing on what you must know for your exams. Google: Google is always our best friend to search on any topic. You can search mnemonics, diagrams, and word associations to make your learning easy. But always make sure that you refer to trusted sources. Because not everything you find in google is 100% true. I always use and recommend websites like Medscape, PubMed, and MayoClinic for high-quality and reliable articles. YouTube: There are many YouTubers who make our learning easy. Many complex topics in Pharmacology are explained in an easy way on YouTube. This is especially helpful for students who are visual or aural learners. You can get access to our Medical Study Resources Library to get access to more than 570+ medical presentations and all other medical resources that will be helpful for your entire career.  Get Access to Medical Resources Library Some slides from the presentations from our Medical Resources Library 5) Don’t memorize the facts, UNDERSTAND IT!  You can’t memorize the facts without understanding it. You can put all the mechanism in a flowchart and you can make study sheet for each drug. If you try to memorize the facts, you’ll forget them very easily. So you have to understand the pharmacological process that happens in a disease.  6) Take Notes You don’t remember everything you hear, but when you write down notes, it will help you retain more information. Sometimes you even don’t understand everything your professor teaches in the class. But when you get back to your home, you’ll understand it more clearly when you revise the notes you’ve taken. These notes will be so helpful in understanding the theories in books and your reading materials given by your institute.  Also, these notes are the secret behind scoring high marks in your exams. You can focus more on these notes before your exams and they will be useful to answer your MCQs from theories that are not covered in your reading materials.  Professors may also tell you memorizing techniques they have used, so when you write them down it will be more useful for you to revise the subject. Pharmacology is a is a difficult, yet an interesting subject. But taking good notes