21 Jan 2016

antibiotics: the bane of my pharm life

There's always that one topic that no matter how many times you make an effort with it, it'll still evade becoming a permanent fixture in your brain. Pharmacology is a topic that I'm usually okay with but for some reason, antibiotics are my Achilles heel. As a result, I've used a variety of methods to try and tackle this mammoth class of drugs.

Firstly, I broke each class down and then limited them to two post-it sized notes. I also colour-coded each one. On each post-it (or two for the beta-lactams and cephalosporins), I would have examples of them, a brief bit on mode of action, major side effects and common uses of them.


I then made an A4 image of how each class of antibiotics attacks the different elements of a bacteria cell. This helps a bit as I do learn quite well from images! And to go even more overboard, I also made a mind map (but this didn't help me so much if I'm honest). 


Finally, I have an A5 sketchbook which I've used to make longer notes on different medications used. I'm not sure the below layout is the best one for me so I'm still experimenting to see how I can best learn and retain all this information! Being on the wards definitely helps though as seeing it in practice means that it goes into my brain that bit easier and quicker.


I genuinely think there's only so much I can learn from the books when it comes to pharmacology. A lot of my existing knowledge came from being on ward round during placement and also looking at drug charts and testing myself. It's also good to have a junior doctor who questions you about the drugs on the chart too (I had one last year who did this on ward round and it helped immensely). 

Antibiotics are still a little bit hazy in my mind but they aren't so scary when you break them down and actually sit down and spend some time with them. Try and relate them to a patient who you've seen on the wards as that seems to have worked for me. I guess that's why they say experience is invaluable! 

Any tips for learning about antibiotics and all their different modes of action, indications and cover?!

7 comments

  1. have you tried mnemonics? they worked for me

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    1. I've not come across any for antibiotics that have stuck in my mind so far - but definitely open to suggestions if you have any :) x

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  3. Cue cards and webs were my go to as well for pharmacology. I need to brush up before intern year!

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    1. Ditto! Pharm is such a huge topic, I'm trying almost every study technique out there to try and learn it all :( x

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  4. Coming from a pharmacist: cue cards and charts. You never quite memorize it all, but knowing where to look to find the info quickly is important. Also, just learning an antibiotic's spectrum isn't good enough, because regional resistance patterns may change what the first line agents are

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    1. At the moment, we've been told to learn our local hospital trust's antibiotic guidelines for exams which is what I'm currently doing. Definitely agree that there will be different guidelines in place for different areas though and we have been told this if we venture away from London :)

      Short of carrying a pocket pharm textbook around with me, I'm not really sure how else to learn it all :( x

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