Opinion by Griffin Brammer, Arts & Entertainment Editor

Here’s an easy pill to swallow: Nurses need to know their drugs. Side effects, mechanisms of action, interactions — they’re all important considerations when it comes to the care of a patient, no matter how acute. Now, here comes the bitter aftertaste: Most Xavier-trained nurses won’t have that knowledge until at least 2027. 

Recently, Xavier updated their program details under the Bachelor of Science in Nursing program. The most noticeable change came under the sample curriculum. Right there, under sophomore year: Nursing 266 — Pharmacology. A class devoted to the science of drugs.

I sure didn’t get that my sophomore year.

Currently, all medication training would be incorporated into either our lectures or our care packets at clinical. The problem with this, however, stems from how little time and variety are present in both these settings. 

We grapple with a large number of lectures reaching a wide variety of patient populations. Pediatrics, complex care, mental health — you name it. We’ve probably covered it. This all culminates in a lot of topics in sometimes as little as half a semester’s time. 

While we were already busy enough learning about different diseases, conditions, treatments, surgeries and nursing considerations, we were also force-fed medication lessons on top of it all. It’s not uncommon to have professors run out of time in a semester due to the sheer amount of curriculum Xavier expects them to teach us. Supplemental online lessons and readings are a weekly occurrence. Needless to say, with so much already going into a lecture, things start to get a little hazy. Sometimes, it feels like I’m lucky enough to remember a beta-blocker can treat hypertension and heart failure, much less how.

Meanwhile, in clinical, everyone is assigned a patient and their medications. As part of the requirement for the weekly clinical assignment, everyone is expected to fill out a number of “drug cards” on the medications listed in the patient’s chart. Essentially, a set of flash cards detailing the barebone basics of the meds. 

It’s a useful little bit of info, if not at least for quick reference, but the problem comes from the patients themselves. Most of us end up on specialized floors for our clinicals, and that means a lot of patients have similar diagnoses, and thus, similar medication orders. Some drugs become more common than others. Far more common. It’s hard to put your knowledge of amiodarone and spironolactone to the test when you are writing up your fifth consecutive med card on Tylenol and aspirin.

The NCLEX — the nationwide exam that determines our licensure — is already changing format around the time of our graduation. Beyond the usual stressors, it’s an unprecedented time to be a senior nursing major.

Previously, the rumor mill was running hot among us nursing majors with talks about pharmacology being added to the program. Things really started to heat up when it was revealed that this would only be offered to the first-year class of 2023. A wave of gripes and disdain flooded my class. It turns out, a lot of us felt the same way. Many of us were annoyed. Many were anxious. Many of us didn’t feel prepared to graduate.

I’ve had to explain to an unprecedented amount of precepting nurses that our college doesn’t offer us a real pharmacology class. Almost every nurse either looks at me with shock, pity, embarrassment or some combination of the three.

I shadowed my nurse for clinical once about a year ago. He unlocked his work station that a new hire had previously been working at. When he did, the in-hospital encyclopedia for drugs was still pulled up from the new girl. She was looking up lisinopril. 

“I can’t stand these new nurses who don’t know sh*t about drugs,” he said. “You better not be like this.”

Jokes on you, I WILL be like this.

I’m afraid to graduate. I’m afraid to be a nuisance to the nurses around me. I’m afraid that I’ll still be looking like an idiot, looking up drugs when I’m on the floor working. I’m afraid of somehow messing something up along the way and putting one of my patients at risk. 

So, as politely as I can put it, we’ve been screwed. We seniors have been asking every year for a pharmacology class, or at least some better way to go about our medication education, and this is what we get in return. For as much as nurses need to know how to triage, the ones running the program treated the papercut before the hemorrhage. 

The prognosis doesn’t look good. In the epidemic of drug confusion, the best Xavier can do now is treat the symptoms. Drug cards, five sheets, by hand, weekly. For us seniors, we’re too far along. The disease has run its course and there is no cure. The best we can hope now is that a weekly dose of pharm can save our first-years from the same fate as us.