Medical students formulary

I am told that some medical schools (UCL, Edinburgh and some others) are given a "medical students' formulary" (i.e. a list of medicines that you should know about. My medical school doesn't do one, but I would be interested to have a look at one to see what sort of medicines are on there, so I'd be really grateful if someone could share theirs. Thanks.

Not a medical student, but we have a formulary to complete over 4 years, and we need to fill in each of the monographs for each of the drugs. This is all examinable in an OSCE viva station with a pharmacology lecturer. For years 1-3 you only need to know the drugs relevant for that year, but for year 4 you need to know all of the drugs in all 4 years.

Hope this helps!

Hmm... interesting. My medical school didn't do this but it's a great idea. Another approach would be to ask to look through all the charts on a hospital drug trolley and make a note of any drug that appears more than once. They will be the ones you need to know about, both for exams and real life. I'd focus on learning their name, mode of action, indication, side effects, and important interactions. You can probably get away with knowing one drug from each major class and, in any event, usually there is one drug in each class that appears frequently. Off the top of my head, drugs that you should know about are:

Anti-hypertensives: amlodipine, bendroflumethiazide, losartan.
Laxatives: senna, fibrogel, movicol.
Anti-coagulants: warfarin, heparin, low molecular weight heparins, aspirin, clopidogrel.
Antibiotics: trimethoprim, co-amoxiclav, amoxicillin, erythromycin, ciprofloxacin, tazocin.
Others: levothyroxine, aspirin, clopidogrel, calcium/vitamin d preparations, citalopram, fluoxetine, prednisoline, hydrocortisone, metformin, insulin, paracetamol, diclofenac, morphine/diamorphine/codeine/tramadol, adrenaline

Drugs that can get you in trouble (and so lead to a pass/fail situation in exams): methotrexate, trimethoprim (as teratogenic), and perhaps vincristine (never never given intrathecally).

Hopefully someone will post an actual med school formulary as it would be useful to see what else they suggest.

We do have one at HYMS although it's not in one nice document, instead it's split down weekly on our VLE. They would be quite good if they were updated, but a lot of the drugs on our formulary are either not commonly used or have been withdrawn from the BNF. We could do with a formulary of commonly used drugs that we should know for the foundation years.

Here you go, got three docs two for Phase 1 and one for Phase 2 at HYMS, with some stuff I've added as well (I can't seem to find the complete copies I had and they state it's not meant to be comprehensive but hope it still helps):