Pharmacology Basics and Safe Medication Administration Flashcards for Nursing Students

This deck contains the following information:

• How drug names work (chemical, generic, brand).
• Medication regulation (US drug schedule, drug risk classification in pregnancy).
• Prescriptions (types, components).
• Telephone orders (best practices).
• Error-prone abbreviations.
• Best practices for safe medication administration.
• Pharmacokinetics (absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion).
• Therapeutic Index and Half-life of medications
• Agonists vs. Antagonists.
• Best practices for administering medications through different routes of administration (oral, NG/G-tube, sublingual/buccal, transdermal, inhalation therapy, optic, otic, intradermal, subcutaneous, intramuscular, intravenous).
• Preparing injections from an ampule and vial.
• Insulin administration and mixing insulins.
• IV therapy (IV insertion, care), and complications (phlebitis, infiltration, extravasation, catheter embolus, air embolus, thrombosis, fluid overload, infection).
• Blood transfusions (blood type compatibility, types of blood products, best practices for administering blood).
• Blood transfusion reactions (mild allergic, anaphylactic, febrile, septic, acute hemolytic, circulatory overload).
• Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN) administration and nursing care.

Not included:

• Specific medications. Actual medications are included in our Pharmacology Edition 2.0 flashcard deck. This deck provides important foundational information on safe medication administration and makes a good companion to our Pharmacology deck.
• Detailed step-by-step instructions for performing skills. These cards focus more on best practices and general information for safe medication administration.

Which Nursing Exams Do These Flashcards Help With?

Cathy Parkes designed this flashcard deck to help nursing students on the following exams:

• NCLEX and comprehensive predictor exams (ex: ATI, HESI)
• Nursing class exams that cover Pharmacology concepts and medication administration (ex: Nursing Fundamentals, Pharmacology, Medical/Surgical Nursing)

The Legend of Cool Chicken

Have you heard the legend of Cool Chicken? It is our most memorable (and talked about) memory aide. As it turns out, nursing material is a lot more fun to learn when you make up silly stories to "explain" the concepts.

This wacky hint has its origin in our Pharmacology videos!

Colchicine is a medication used to treat an acute gout attack.

HINT: Colchicine kind of looks like 'cool chicken'.

Guy to his friend with a chicken: "Hey man, cool chicken. OUCH! Your chicken just pecked and cut my gouty toe!"

The Level Up RN community loved this hint, and it was the reason we started adding more hints to our flashcard decks.

The Cool Chicken highlights a silly memory device that makes it easier to learn the material you need to know!