SystemWise Pharm · Cardiac

3 drug groups.
Two resources. One method.

You are not revising all of pharmacology today. You are revising the 3 drug groups that belong to cardiac — the list is below — and this system splits across two resources: Sketchy for the first two groups, Dirty Medicine for the third. The split is already decided. The method is FWRT.

Why this page exists

Pharmacology is not hard. Pharmacology is disorganized. Hundreds of drugs in First Aid, nobody tells you which ones the exam asks about, and every resource teaches a different subset well and the rest badly. So students watch everything, from everywhere, twice — and lose three weeks. This page removes the decision-making for cardiac. Three groups, two resources, four steps, done.

Never done Sketchy? Read this first

If you have only ever used First Aid, you can revise every drug on this page from First Aid and the FA Guide alone, together with the High-Yield Pharmacology PDF. The drug list below is still your list; only the source changes. You will not fail for skipping the videos.

But if you have the time, invest in the resource named against each group — Sketchy, Osmosis or Dirty Medicine, whichever this page specifies. That naming is the product: somebody already worked out which one teaches that group best, so you never sample three videos to find the good one. If you can afford the hours, use both.

PART ONEThe FWRT method

Four steps, in order, for every drug group. You do not move to the next system until all four are done for this one.

F

Find the resource

Already done for you, for cardiac: antiarrhythmics and digoxin from Sketchy, lipid-lowering agents from Dirty Medicine. That is the whole split. Follow it — do not learn all three from one place because it feels tidier.

Why: no one tells you which drug is high-yield or where to learn it, so you either learn all 400 equally — impossible — or you pick a resource and hope. The map is the answer to that. It is what turns three weeks into two days.
W

Watch — twice, not once

Open the video for that drug group from its mapped resource — and nothing else. Not the Sketchy version and the Osmosis version. Not a third opinion on YouTube. Watch each video twice, back to back.

Why: pharm is dense — mechanism, indication, side effects, interactions, stacked into a few minutes. One pass gets you recognition, not recall. Two passes of one video beats one pass of two videos, every time.
R

Read — and highlight what didn't survive

After you have watched all three groups — not after each video, after the whole system — go back to the High-Yield Pharmacology PDF and read those same drugs. Whatever you could not retain, highlight those lines.

Why: those highlighted lines are your memory gaps — the facts that did not survive two viewings. Everything unhighlighted is done and you never touch it again. That is the entire diagnostic, and it is earned rather than guessed.
T

Test yourself

First Aid Guide → Cardiovascular → Pharmacology. Every drug you just watched is explained there with MCQs attached, page by page, following First Aid.

Why: watching and reading are input. The MCQs force you to apply it, which is the only thing the exam ever asks you to do. This is the step that closes the loop.
What "done" means

Cardiac pharm is done when the MCQs are done and the highlighted lines have been re-read once. Not when the videos are watched. Watching is the cheapest part of this method and the least predictive of your score.

PART TWOThe 3 cardiac drug groups

This is the entire cardiac row of the resource map. If a group is not here, it is not in your 48 hours — that is the point of stratification.

Sketchy · 2 groups
  1. 01Antiarrhythmics — Classes I, II, III and IV — Sketchy
  2. 02Digoxin — Sketchy
Dirty Medicine · 1 group
  1. 03Lipid-lowering agents — statins, fibrates, ezetimibe, PCSK9 inhibitors, bile-acid resins — Dirty Medicine
Recommended, not required

Before the lipid-lowering drugs, watch the three Dirty Medicine lipid metabolism videos. Understanding how lipid metabolism actually works first makes the lipid-lowering drugs make far more sense. Skip it and you'll still pass the questions; watch it and you'll stop memorizing them.

PART THREEOne drug group, worked through

Here is FWRT applied to the first group on the list, in full, so you know exactly what each step looks like before you do it twice more.

Worked example · 01 of 03 Antiarrhythmics
F

The resource is already chosen — Sketchy

Do not open Osmosis to compare. Do not search YouTube for a better explanation of Class III. The map decided; your job is to watch.

W

Watch the antiarrhythmics sketches twice, back to back

All four classes. Not once today and once tomorrow — twice, now. The second pass is where it stops being a story you recognise and becomes a mechanism you can retrieve.

You should be able to say, without looking The four classes and what each one blocks · the prototype drugs of each class · what each class does to the action potential · the signature toxicity the exam attaches to each prototype · which class the stem is steering you toward
R

Read the antiarrhythmics pages of the PDF — after all three groups

Not now. Finish digoxin and the lipid-lowering agents first, then read all three together and highlight only what did not come back. If half the page ends up yellow, you did not watch twice.

T

Do the MCQs — First Aid Guide → Cardiovascular → Pharmacology

This group only, in the order First Aid presents it. Getting one wrong here costs you two minutes and fixes the gap permanently; the same gap found on test day costs you the mark.

Then twice more

That is one group. Do the same for digoxin — still Sketchy — then switch to Dirty Medicine for the lipid-lowering agents — and cardiac pharm is finished. Do not start another system's drugs. Do not go back to the map. Close this and move to your cardiac First Aid reading.

Open the FA Guide → Cardiovascular Pharmacology The High-Yield Pharmacology PDF
The full 48-hour pharmacology method CVS Micro — the WRWRT method Back to my schedule