How to Remember Blood Pressure Drugs for Nursing

Having trouble remembering the different blood pressure medications for nursing? Or maybe you don’t feel like you have enough time to study them all? Between the ACE Inhibitors, ARBs, Beta Blockers, and more, there are over 20 different drug names that any nursing student or practicing nurse needs to know! In this post, I’ll share my visual memory aid to master all the blood pressure drugs for nursing school and the NCLEX. This technique will not only save you time, but it has been proven to improve your ability to retain and recall the information. Get ready to conquer the world of blood pressure drugs (and have fun doing it!)

Visual Mnemonic for ACE Inhibitors

Since there’s a lot of different blood pressure medications, I suggest chunking the information and focusing on one drug class at a time. Watch our video below for a mnemonic to remember the ACE Inhibitors, a class of drugs that includes the drugs lisinopril, captopril, and enalapril. You can view the accompanying image here.

In short, we’ve put all the information about the ACE Inhibitors into a single picture mnemonic. Here’s a summary of the facts for the ACE Inhibitors we covered in the mnemonic above:

ACE Inhibitors (aces inhibited) are medications that end in -pril (april showers), including lisinopril, captopril, ramipril, and enalapril. ACE inhibitors work by blocking angiotensin converting enzyme or ACE, which blocks the conversion of angiotensin I to its active counterpart, angiotensin II. Reduced angiotensin II levels cause vasodilation, and reduced downstream signaling of aldosterone further reduces blood volume. The overall effect of treatment with an ACE inhibitor is lowering of blood pressure (deflating blood pressure cuff). Clinically, ACE inhibitors are used to treat hypertension and heart failure (fixing broken heart pump). Side effects include a dry cough (dryer cough), angioedema (swollen face), and hyperkalemia (lots of bananas). Notably, ACE inhibitors are teratogenic (tarantula) and should not be used during pregnancy.

Just remember our casino with its inhibited Aces and the deflating blood pressure cuff, and you’ll be set to remember ACE Inhibitors come test day.

How to Remember Angiotensin Receptor Blockers (ARBs)

As I mentioned above, it is easier to learn the different diabetes drugs if you break the information up into smaller pieces. This follows a memory phenomenon known as chunking, which is why phone numbers are broken up (e.g. 1-800-867-5309 compared to 18008675309).

As such, we’ve separated the different blood pressure drugs into separate mnemonics. Watch the below video for our mnemonic for Angiotensin Receptor Blockers (ARBs). The interactive image for review can be found here.

Once again, here’s all the facts we’ve covered for Angiotensin Receptor Blockers above:

ARBs (Arb’s fast food) stands for Angiotensin II Receptor Blockers (angel tension x2 receptacle blocked) . The drug names of ARBs all end with “-sartan” (Satan) , like losartan and valsartan. Clinically, ARBs lower blood pressure (deflating blood pressure cuff) and are used to treat both hypertension and heart failure (fixing broken heart pump) . Side effects of ARBs include increasing potassium levels (lots of bananas), so you’ll want to monitor the patient’s potassium levels to monitor for hyperkalemia. ARBs are teratogenic (tarantula) and should not be taken during pregnancy. Other side effects include angioedema (swollen face), dizziness (dizzy), and hypotension (deflating blood pressure cuff). ARBs are contraindicated with renal artery stenosis (prohibited squeezing of vessel-like tube for kidney beans). And remember, ARBs do not cause a cough (“no cough”) which is why you may see patients switch over to ARBs from ACE inhibitors.

Picture yourself at the Arb’s fast food joint and the angel figurines that come with the meal, and you’ll have the most important facts for Angiotensin Receptor Blockers under wraps.

Use Image Learning to Score Higher

So why does this all work? Well, our brain is better at remembering pictures than words. This is known as the picture superiority effect, and you can take advantage of this by using visual mnemonics to remember facts. But making images like this takes time, which is why Pixorize has already made video mnemonics for all of the different blood pressure drugs. This includes all the different drug classes, like Beta Blockers, Calcium Channel Blockers, Clonidine, Hydralazine, Aliskiren, Nitroprusside, and more. In conclusion, visual mnemonics are a powerful tool for any nursing student or nurse seeking to strengthen their grasp of pharmacology, all while saving time . See the full catalog of Pixorize’s Nursing School mnemonics here.