How to Remember Anti-Neoplastic Drugs for Nursing

Feeling overwhelmed by all the different cancer medications for nursing? You’re not alone – between Cyclophosphamide, Tamoxifen, Methotrexate, Doxorubicin, 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 anti-neoplastic 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.

Visual Mnemonic for Cyclophosphamide

In order to best remember the different anti-neoplastic drugs, I suggest chunking the information and focusing on one drug class at a time. Watch our video below for a mnemonic to remember Cyclophosphamide, a very common chemotherapy drug. You can view the accompanying image here.

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

Cyclophosphamide (cyclops) and ifosfamide (fossil) are chemotherapy drugs (cancer crab) that can treat a wide variety of cancers. They also have anti-inflammatory properties (anti-inflammatory fire extinguisher) that are used to treat autoimmune conditions like lupus and myasthenia gravis. An important side effect of these drugs is hemorrhagic cystitis (blood in urine) , or bladder damage causing bleeding into the urine. It also causes the side effects common to most chemotherapy drugs – bone marrow suppression (empty hollow bones) and GI upset (nausea) .

Just remember our cave with its cyclophosphamide cyclops and ifosfamide fossil, and you’ll be set to remember Cyclophosphamide come test day.

How to Remember Methotrexate

As I mentioned above, it is easier to learn the different cancer 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 anti-neoplastic drugs into separate mnemonics. Watch the below video for our mnemonic for Methotrexate. The interactive image for review can be found here.

Once again, here’s all the facts we’ve covered for Methotrexate above:

Methotrexate (matrix) is a medication that works by blocking or inhibiting folate (ripping folate folder). This blocks cell division, which can be used to kill rapidly-dividing cells. Due to this, methotrexate is often used as a chemotherapy to treat various forms of cancer (cancer crab). It is also used for its anti-inflammatory effects (anti-inflammatory fire extinguisher) to treat autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. Side effects of methotrexate include hepatotoxicity (damaged liver lever), bone marrow suppression (falling empty bones), and gastrointestinal disturbances (nausea), including stomatitis. Folic acid supplements may help alleviate severe GI side effects, but remind patients to consult with their doctor beforehand. Finally, methotrexate is teratogenic (tarantula) and should not be taken by pregnant women.

Picture yourself in the methotrexate matrix tearing up the folate folder, and you’ll have the most important facts for Methotrexate 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 cancer drugs. This includes all the different drug classes, like Imatinib, Paclitaxel, Rituximab, Trastuzumab, Vincristine, Cisplatin, 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.