useless rubbish..

[giggsy]

please delete

[pharout]

Originally Posted by giggsy

I am doing first year of pharmacy and have just finished my first semster. Oh my god, do we not get learnt some rubbish. I am totally fed up of the maths content, the lecturers inability to teach (simply stick up bullet points on lectures) and my head is hurting.

We are getting irrevelant stuff if you ask me, I dont really understand where ph and buffers comes into pharmacy or mass spectroscopy

Giggsy, there is a method to the madness. It will most likely come into play in pharmaceutics/pharmaceutical lab work/biochemistry (e.g. acid-base balance such as metabolic/respiratory acidosis or alkalosis). Math, obviously in calculations. As with every course, you must learn the theory behind what you do. Will you actually use it? Well, that's a different story. It's usually the same with registration exams. Someone on this forum asked a question about a dilution factor, great trivia and good exam question, but useless in real world. You will most likely learn the most from experiential training when you get it vs. didactic lectures. Chances are you will forget most of this once you pass your tests.

[johnep]

Goodness gracious, you should have covered pH and buffers in A level. No wonder four years now required. I did ph etc early in 6th form course.

Very important for injections, especially depot insulin.
johnep

[Jeff]

Originally Posted by giggsy

I am doing first year of pharmacy and have just finished my first semster. Oh my god, do we not get learnt some rubbish. I am totally fed up of the maths content, the lecturers inability to teach (simply stick up bullet points on lectures) and my head is hurting.

Lectures don't teach - university isn't school. They just tell you about what you're supposed to go away and learn.
Maths - people die (regularly) from wrong dilutions
Your hurting head is quite natural - it's called a hangover (Unless you really haven't found out what university is about)

We are getting irrevelant stuff if you ask me,

1st year tends to be a rehash of A levels to make sure that everyone starts from the same base.

I dont really understand where ph and buffers comes into pharmacy

stability of the end product

or mass spectroscopy

Analysis/purity/development of products - there's no such thing as a "community pharmacy" degree.

Jeff

[snowy]

Yeah the maths in first year made my head hurt too. The thing with first year is we are taught all this stuff without being told how it will be relevant and we are simply expected to remember it all. But it will come together a lot more later on when you learn more about drugs and their effects on the body.

[Zoggite]

So you think maths is rubbish, eh?
In my 2nd year Pharmacy degree in Belgium, I was made to learn to identify mushrooms and toadstools, because customers in the autumn would go harvesting them in the woods & fields and bring them in to the pharmacy and have the phcist tell them which ones were safe to eat and which ones weren't...

[giggsy]

no I am not very good at maths, i didnt do it at a level maths and they keep giving us intergration etc which I just cannot do. Its been 4 years since I did maths every week in gcse.

[snowy]

Giggsy can you get someone to give you a one-off session on all the essential maths that you need? I only did maths up to GCSE level too and started pharmacy as a mature student so any maths I knew had totally left me by the time I started. I don't go to the same uni as you so the maths content might be different but it was the logs that got me. I asked someone to go over the parts I couldn't get my head around with me and after a bit of practice I was ok. After first year it's unlikely you will use anywhere near as much maths as you are using now.

[Pharmanaut]

Originally Posted by snowy

Giggsy can you get someone to give you a one-off session on all the essential maths that you need? I only did maths up to GCSE level too and started pharmacy as a mature student so any maths I knew had totally left me by the time I started. I don't go to the same uni as you so the maths content might be different but it was the logs that got me. I asked someone to go over the parts I couldn't get my head around with me and after a bit of practice I was ok. After first year it's unlikely you will use anywhere near as much maths as you are using now.

Integration and differentiation baffle me and I'm good with equations.
We had to do a maths test on them so I wrote a step-by-step approach and practiced it. It helped me through the test, and didn't have to re-take.

Have you had a look around the internet for a 'dummy's guide' (no sleight intended) - very often the key to understanding it is finding and explanation that you get into the groove with.

[silnarnin]

You don't understand the importance of pH to pharmacy?

So how do you know if a medicine should taken in a empty stomach or full stomach, or avoid antacids?! It's all about the pH. The pH in which the coating of the tablets dissolve, or the pH where the own drug dissolves! By the way, if a drug isn't dissolved, it can't be absorbed!

How do you think the enteric coating of tablets works? It's the pH!