Looking on how students in pharmacy relate their knowledge to disease stage or how they relate mechanisms of action of drugs, I discovered that these areas are not well-addressed. Such design that does integrate physiology, pathophysiology and mechanisms by which drugs act, and understanding that setting in a clinical format is affecting the knowledge of pharmacy students and pushing them into the memorisation of pieces of factual knowledge from here and there.
Do you see what I am saying? I am sure that this problem is everywhere and is not graduating students at the standards that we would like to see. What is your experience? And what did you do with such a problem in the design of the curriculum?
As a student of Pharmacy i can tell you that most of the students are just very uninterested in science and only wish to be done with it and work in a pharmacy store. It is quite horrifying. I have heard a student say: "i like plants. I think that synthetic drugs are horribe and plant-derived drugs are much healthier". At that point i did not even attempt to explain how wrong she is. She has literally learnt nothing during her 4 years of studying.
The knowledge is not learnt to be used as information to be applied in a deductive manner. A few students here and there decide to do pharmacovigilance because of what they are whitnessing. But in terms of clinical pharmacy very few are drawn into it because of higher risk and greater responsibility that is required for the job on which they have not previously tought of during bachelor or early master studies, so even though it is the highest paid profession for a pharmacist most end up feeling unqualified to even attempt to do it. I wont even start speaking of research related pharmacists...like one in 70 subjectively speaking.
The curriculum at my university is quite well designed. The solution would be better selection of students through better entrance exam questions that focus on using the material in a deductive manner.
Dear Danilo - Thank you for your response, you raised several critical issues. I wonder about integrating clinical pharmacology, with pathophysiology, and disease stage (clinical cases) in the curriculum. Also, understanding the individualisation of therapy: For example, what would be best medications for treating hypertension? In (1) a patient with hypertension and heart failure, (2) a patient with hypertension and renal failure, (3) a patient with hypertension and diabetes, type 2, (4) a patient with hypertension and tachycardia.
We do have a master course of clinical pharmacology that addresses all of the points you mentioned. The exam is 3 hours long and consists of several fictional patients as questions with the incorporation of the actual working environment challenges a clinical pbarmacist faces.
I have mentored pharmacy students over the years. From my perspective as a mentor I believe that integrating pharmacology, therapeutics, pathophysiology and clinical chemistry is important if pharmacy students are going to get the best in terms of how to be a good pharmacist.
Danilo mentions better selection of students; while this might be a way to go, I believe that the key is for pharmacy students to understand that being a pharmacist is not just a about learning facts but it is a job in which you apply knowledge you have acquired. Presently I teach pharmacognosy (the study of medicinal plant).
As a teacher it allows me to help students understand how medicinal plants contribute to orthodox medicines.
Thank you, Danilo and Elmonda for your responses. I am mean the undergraduate curriculum in Pharmacy. Yes, these concern may have been solved partly in a master degree, but at the undergraduate, even top students in the course they know fragmented information and not showing an understanding of the concepts. I think the educators in Pharmacy need to work with medical educators for better outcomes.
Best regards
I think the worst enemy of the Pharmacy education in India is the pharmacy syllabus (B.pharm and M. pharm). Since the inception of the course some 50 years back, lots of addition has happened in the pharmacy knowledge . Accordingly there was only addition and no subtraction.
Awareness about the pharmacy course is very poor. Students who opt for medicine but unable to crack NEET ( entry for MBBS) enroll for pharmacy as second choice. Others take admission for opening a shop. The 8 semester four year course is a pure hybrid of engg and medicine.
The result is superficial knowledge with little application potential.
@ Samy
Hi, Since reading this discussion I was trying to recall how I learnt to apply the subjects being thought to my pharmacy practice. I remember doing case studies as part of my therapeutics classes that helped me to cement the areas of pharmacology with anatomy and physiology.
In addition, there was a clerkship course which was done in the clinical setting. As students we were assigned in the clinical setting to work with a pharmacist who mentored us. We also had clinical teaching sessions from a doctor who looked as some medical issues after which we were told to reviewed patient notes and their medication history with the pharmacist who mentored us. At the end of the clerkship period; as pharmacy students we had to decipher the information gain and present the case to the class and our pharmacy course leader after which we were quizzed about certain aspects of our presentation.
I believe that the clerkship part of the course was very instrumental in helping me to gain the skills necessary for being a pharmacist. I hope my recollections as a pharmacy student might help
Hi Samy, based on my engagement in pharmacy across a wide geographic region ranging of emerging to developed economies, it is obvious that in some countries the nature of pharmacy practice has changed faster than academia. We have witnessed practice evolve from the historical drug development, manufacture and supply functions to include a growing engagement with therapeutics and patient care. The academics who built their careers in teaching the science and engineering of the former are not able to teach the clinical practices of the later and are often reluctant to give way to practitioner-teachers who are experienced in patient care. The subject matter, structure of the curricula and the nature of assessment have been slow to evolve in some areas. When restructuring a curriculum to address this problem, there should be close engagement of pharmacists involved in clinical practice who will need to both teach into the program and supervise students on experiential placements.
I want to emphasize here that what I described in my question is not about universities in Australia; we have up-to-date curricula in nearly all our universities. We have experts that introduced changes in curricula including integration, and student-centred design, that date back to the mid-90s, and followed by 3-4 other changes since then. However, I believe medical experts with experiences in designing medical curricula should be part of curriculum reformation projects in pharmacy, dentistry, physiotherapy, and other health sciences.
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