Introduction
First, we would like to thank you for stopping by Catapult Pharmacology to learn about our pharmacology review aid. We think you are on the right track to find the best companion to your medical pharmacology course.
Learning pharmacology is a challenging endeavor all on its own. But you are probably simultaneously learning pathology and other rigorous courses, which makes processing the information for long term retention exponentially more challenging. Efficiency in studying and retention is paramount.
Catapult pharmacology is here to help.
There is no doubt that pharmacology takes time and repetition to master. There is no way around spending the time to memorize the names of the drugs and their classes. Efficiency comes from grouping the medications into classes so the mechanism of action, indications, and side-effects can be applied to all the drugs in that class. Of course, there will be exceptions to the rule, but this is the most efficient way to excel at learning the necessary information.
So how do we memorize and classify the names of thousands of drugs with names like cyclobenzaprine, cyproheptadine, cyanocobalamin, cyclosporine, cyclophosphamide, and cyclopentolate without mixing them up?
The not so Secret Sauce
Here at Catapult Pharmacology, we turn to using memory tools that have been around for centuries. The memory tool used at Catapult Pharmacology is based on the tools that memory masters use to memorize things like the order of a deck of cards or a shopping list. This tool was brought to the masses in the book, “Moonwalking with Einstein” by Joshua Foer, who highlights his quest to become a memory master using these techniques.
A Simple Example Exercise
To illustrate this memory master technique, we will guide you through a short example of a shopping list memorization:
Here’s your shopping list: potatoes, bananas, orange juice, grapes, and bread.
You might be able to remember a list of five things that you need from the store 30 minutes from now, but could you remember today’s shopping list next month or even next year? That’s the level of memory that we expect to and can achieve with use of the memory tool used at Catapult Pharmacology.
So, to remember this list, I want you to picture the entryway into your home in your mind’s eye. Just inside your door, you are going to place the bag of potatoes that you need from the store. Put that bag of potatoes there and look at it with your mind’s eye. What color is the bag, what color are the potatoes, is it a clear plastic bag or one of those mesh style bags?
Next along the pathway into your home and kitchen area, a step or two from the bag of potatoes, I want you to place the bananas on the floor. Look at those bananas. Look at the bananas in relation to the potato sack.
Now, keep on going along the pathway from the front door to your kitchen placing the items on the list. Next after the bananas is the carton of orange juice. Next, along the path are the grapes. These grapes could be red grapes or green grapes – bag or plastic container, whatever makes sense to you. Look at the grapes, orange juice, bananas and potatoes in a line and then place the bread next along the path after the grapes.
Go ahead and review the images we placed, potatoes, bananas, orange juice, grapes, and bread. You might need to come back to this a few times over the next day or two to cement this into long-term memory, but this is the concept we’ll be using at Catapult Pharmacology.
Memory Tool Applied to Pharmacology
Creating Images
How do we apply this memory tool to pharmacology? The concept involves associating parts of words (in this case, parts of the name of a drug) with images, then grouping the images together to form the word. Now take that whole group of images, which represent the single drug, and place the images in a specific location in your memory palace.
Wait a minute… what’s a memory palace. A memory palace is a place in your mind that you place things to remember them. This works great in pharmacology because you can place groupings of drugs and their associated images in the same location. That location could be a drawer in your kitchen, a shelf in your pantry, a room of your home, your kindergarten classroom, or even on your right leg.
Let’s take the first drug class we discuss in Catapult Pharmacology as an example: direct acting cholinergic agonists. There are five medications in this class: bethanechol, cevimeline, pilocarpine, carbachol, and methacholine.
For each drug, we break down the name into a series of images that remind you of the name of the drug. First, we’ll make an image for bethanechol. Breaking bethanechol down, I naturally think of “Beth” and “Coal.” For cevimeline, cevi- reminds me of the number seven and -meline reminds me of melons, so for cevimeline I have an image of seven melons. These examples, I think, illustrate the idea. There are more medications in this class and images can be created for those drugs as well.
Next, after developing your images, you need to place those images somewhere – your memory palace.
The Memory Palace
The organization of your memory palace plays an important role in categorizing drugs. Continuing with the example above regarding the direct acting cholinergic agonists, placement of other related drug classes can be strategically done to highlight similarities and provide contrast between medication classes. There are three drug classes that either directly (direct acting cholinergic agonists and centrally acting cholinergic agonists) or indirectly (reversible acetylcholinesterase inhibitors) stimulate cholinergic receptors. We will place these related drugs adjacent to each other on the main floor of our memory palace.
- Let’s place the direct acting cholinergic agonists in one room of the house.
- In the adjacent room, let’s place the centrally acting cholinergic agonists.
- Finally, let’s place the reversible acetylcholinesterase inhibitors in an additional adjacent room.
Receptors that can be stimulated by drugs can also be blocked or antagonized by other drugs. Cholinergic receptors are an example of receptors that have drugs that stimulate the receptor (as reviewed above), and drugs that inhibit the receptor. You can use your memory palace to an advantage in this situation. Let’s place the anticholinergic drug class in the basement of the home to highlight that the anticholinergic drugs have the opposite effect of the cholinergic stimulating medications that were placed in adjacent rooms on the main floor.
… And that’s it. Not much else to the process.
Throughout the review, we provide suggestions for your own memory palace; however, please use every opportunity to find associations that are significant to you in both the image creation and placement. Exaggerating the images in your brain is easy. Raunchy, foul, and funny images are encouraged as they are likely to stick with you more easily and for longer.
Some people find that tagging their images with certain colors or other additions can be useful to remember side effects or other important details about specific medications. Feel free to embellish your images to accomplish this goal.
Other Catapult Pharmacology Features
Videos
Our videos are designed to efficiently present the most critical details of each drug class. Each video begins with an outline of the “high points” of each drug class. Then, we highlight each of the following sections in more detail: names of all the drugs, their indications, mechanism of action, and adverse effects. Finally, we summarize the highlights to reinforce the most important points. In these brief videos, the most critical details are reviewed 3 times.
Text Review
Below each video module, a text review of the important facts is available to read. The text review is organized with a brief overview paragraph to highlight the most important facts about each drug class followed by a list of all the medications in the class. Next, is the class mechanism of action followed by common indications for the class. Adverse effects follow the drug indications. At the bottom of each lesson is a table that lists each medication, important individual medication attributes or indications and a suggested memory tool image.
Worksheets
While the memory tool is great, Catapult Pharmacology has other learning tools to help you master your pharmacology course. The next modules will review the other tools available in this course.
We’ve developed worksheets and review sheets to help you review and test your knowledge. One of the review worksheets for each chapter is completely filled out and acts as an answer key. The other worksheet is filled with blanks, which allow you to test your knowledge and recall abilities. This method has an advantage over using flashcards because you are physically writing the answer, which provides another brain connection to the associations and ensures that you are engaged with the content.
Quiz Questions
These questions are designed to stimulate the recall of specific facts and include explanations.