Mnemonics Improve Pharmacy Students' Knowledge Retention, Clinical Application, and Exam Performance in a PharmD Pharmacology Course

Students in healthcare professions taking pharmacology courses often feel challenged with learning and remembering crucial facts about medications, i.e., knowledge acquisition and retention. In addition, applying pharmacological knowledge into clinical settings consumes significant amounts of the student's working memory (i.e., cognitive load). Mnemonics (memory aids) are used to reduce cognitive load and facilitate learning and knowledge retention among students. Our study assessed the impact of the mnemonics' use in a Pharmacology course offered to second-year pharmacy students on students' perceptions of knowledge acquisition, retention, and clinical application in correlation to their exam performance.Eighteen mnemonics were developed and used in a course covering endocrine and autonomic pharmacology topics. Students' perceptions of the impact of mnemonics' use on their knowledge acquisition, retention, clinical application, critical thinking, and confidence while answering questions on exams were collected using an anonymous survey in the fall semester of 2020. Further, students' perceptions were matched to their exam performance.Survey responses from 56 students (85% response rate) indicated that 80.4% agreed that mnemonics' use facilitated knowledge acquisition by reducing anxiety while learning, and 98.2% of students indicated that the use of mnemonics improved knowledge retention and application. Mnemonics' use was also reported to improve critical thinking while answering exam questions (89.3% agreed) and increased confidence during test-taking (96.4% agreed). Interestingly, 64.7% of students using mnemonics answered the associated exam questions correctly compared to 35.3% of students (p<0.05) who did not use the mnemonic aids.Our study suggests that mnemonics' use in pharmacology courses not only improved students' perception of knowledge acquisition, retention, application, and critical thinking but also improved their exam performance on specific questions that tested concepts taught with mnemonics. Future studies will assess students' knowledge retention and perceptions of mnemonics' use with exam performance in subsequent pharmacotherapy and pharmacy skills courses.