She advises students to first classify drugs into categories, then learn the action, metabolism, and adverse effects for the entire class of drugs. This strategy helps students to distill the fundamental principles while cutting down on the number of facts to memorize. But for clinical assignments, Cherry reminds students that they must learn the details of all the patient's laboratory results, medications, and procedures. Other professionals use references and so should nurses. Instead of skimming the surface for facts that may be obsolete tomorrow, Cherry wants students to search deeper for principles.
Principles are more enduring because they form the building blocks of concepts.
If you don't understand the principles, you need to go back and review until you understand. Productive To spend less time reading, but more time understanding, engage the material in a dialogue. Instead of reading from beginning to end, approach an article by asking questions, then look for the answers. Or if a question is raised in the abstract, skip forward to the methods, results, or discussion sections to find the answer. You can also use your time more wisely by recognizing when it's time to quit.