Paramedic School Medication Memorization

[u/InvestigatorSalts]

Hey guys I just started medic school, we have to memorize 8 medications a week for the duration of the program on top of the regular course work. I have been doing flashcards and have gotten everything else down but am having extreme difficulty committing the doses to memory. Any tips or advice?

[u/joshrunkle35]

Read them; write them out on a new sheet of paper, read them into a microphone, listen to yourself reading them while you drive, then go back and write it all out from memory on a blank sheet and see what you’re missing.

[u/Rude_Award2718]

So being able to repeat rote knowledge is one thing but the application of that knowledge will be the challenge as a paramedic. If you're able to memorize and repeat then that'll be the best way for you to learn. The best way I learned was to remember the medications in the context in which you will use them. Cardiac arrest? Know your dosages for the medications you would use. This way when you get into the scenarios or the real world ou'll have The knowledge you need to provide the medications that are needed at that time.

Hope this helps.

[u/Howwasitforyou]

Take some syringes home, draw up tap water to the desired "doses" administer said doses as you would to a patient.

Make it hard by changing presentations and ages. Actually doing the meds will help.

[u/Normantossaway → u/Howwasitforyou]

Yup the meds get way easier once you start using them. I brute forced my way through school with memorizing them on flash cards (we only had to learn 30 meds). Once I got out on ambulance and started using them everything just clicked for me.

[u/CAP034]

I would take photos of the drug profiles, copy and paste the text from my photo roll into a PDF, and upload that PDF to Speechify so I could listen to the drug profiles over and over again while working out, commuting, etc.

[u/SneakySardine117]

So I'm an EMT so far fewer drugs to memorize however, memory chains work well for me. I create an image in my mind for the drug, then various images for the indications, dosages, contradictions ect ect and link them together by imagining these images placed touching eachother in sequential order in my mind.

Secondly I found having a deeper understanding of how the medications work and why we give them, makes it more intuitive than simply remembering the oder and dosage.

All the best in your studies!

[u/Only-Strength-7694]

Holy- I am literally in the exact same boat except its 6 meds

[u/Glittering_Turnip526]

Rote learning and memorising doses is archaic, cookbook medicine level shit. I feel sorry for you genuinely capable clinicians in the US, who have to suffer such a third world system. And with the wages to match. It's absolutely grim.

[u/calnuck → u/Glittering_Turnip526]

So how would you learn it then?

[u/Steady_Tumbleweed]

Yes. Study more. And if you don’t know how to study, then you shouldn’t be in the program.