Authors

  1. Pence, Patricia EdD, MSN, RN

Article Content

To meet COVID-19 guidelines, a didactic on-campus course was transitioned to a Zoom class. To engage students in the prelicensure pharmacology course, an on-campus strategy was adapted for a synchronous Zoom class. The pharmacology topic for this strategy was aspirin, acetaminophen, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. A narrated voice-over PowerPoint was posted in the online Learning Management System prior to class. To introduce the next pharmacology content, students were instructed to search their home medicine cabinet for one of the medications to be discussed in the next Zoom class. Each student was directed to report on the action, use, recommended dosage, adverse effects, directions, and black-box warnings. As students joined the Zoom class, they posted their findings on information provided by the manufacturers to consumers on the labels in the chat feature of the Zoom class. After the faculty-led lecture on these medications, the class was divided into small groups of 3 to 4 in a Zoom breakout session. Students were provided with a Word document that included 6 patient-based scenarios on the medications. The students were to determine if the medication taken by the patient was a safe dosage in 3 scenarios and if a medication error by the nurse occurred in another 3 scenarios. A debriefing was led by the nurse educator. This adapted activity for a Zoom class proved to connect learning of common medications found in a medicine cabinet with pharmacology content.