of cephalosporins

And I’ve got some clever ways

You can remember them

For the first generation we have

Cefazolin and Cephalexin

Now Cef-hAZ-olin sounds kind of like “has”

And Cephalexin contains the word “ale”

So the first question you want to ask is,

Do you has any ale?

That’s the first thing you might ask

When you go to a friend’s house

Do you has any ale?

For Cef-hAZ-olin and Ceph-ALE-xin

That’s the first generation

Now we’re going to skip altogether

The cephalosporins in the second generation

There’s no easy way to remember this group

So you’ll have to use the process of elimination

But fortunately the third generation is easy

All you gotta do is remember the number three

You can fix things in three days with Ce-FIX-ime

And “tri” means three in Cef-TRI-axone

Cefo-TAX-ime reminds you people do their taxes

Usually in the third month of the year

And for Cef-TAZ-idime, just close your eyes

And picture three TAZ-manian devils

That’s the third generation

Along the same lines, for the fourth generation

We’ll focus on the number four

Cefepime covers Pseudomonas,

And that has four syllables: Pseu-do-mon-as

So it goes with Ce-FOUR-pime

That’s the fourth generation

And last but not least, Ceftaroline

Ceftaroline is in the fifth generation

Think of a star with five points

And say Cef-STAR-oline

That’s the fifth generation

There are five generations of cephalosporins

And now you know some clever ways to remember them

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