From: <abstracts@gsm

DEMONSTRATION

TRC Pharmacology: Teaching Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy throughout an Integrated Medical School Curriculum.

Eline Dubois

Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands

ABSTRACT:

Due to curricular changes at the Leiden University Medical Center, pharmacology teaching had to be integrated throughout the blocks in the curriculum. For this purpose three learning strategies have been developed, which address the following requirements: 1) a consistent presentation across the curriculum, 2) enhancement of student self-learning possibilities, 3) integration with other medical disciplines, and 4) approval by teachers. The Teaching Resource Centre, Pharmacology has developed three computer-based learning strategies that are consistently used throughout the curriculum. These programs present new pharmacological information using a newly developed icon language, and assess the student’s knowledge using a standard format, regardless of topic.

The learning strategies include:

1) The TRC Pharmacology database, which provides basic information on pharmacology and mechanisms of drug action integrated with respect to physiology and pathophysiology. This program uses a Microsoft Access Treevie database, and combines graphics or animations according to the icon language, explanation texts and formative feedback questions. This database interface is on the Internet and as such, is an easily accessible, accurate, and up-to-date bank of information that is dynamic. http://coo.lumc.nl/TRC

2) The Interactive TRC program, which challenges students to interactively solve basic pharmacological / physiologic problems. The icons were incorporated into Macromedia Flash©. http://coo.lumc.nl/TRC/interactief 3) the TRC Individual Therapy: Evaluation and Plan writing (ITEP), which teaches the student how to make rational therapeutic choices for a specific patient following a standard format. The student is initially guided through the therapeutic decision making process via an online example case in an interactive step-by-step manner whereby the note is self-assessed. The student is then obliged to independently write another ITEP note that is emailed to a central location for assessment. Computer programs that are integrated throughout the curriculum provide pharmacology knowledge and practice on pharmacotherapy on which both students and teachers increasingly rely. Since the introduction of the programs, there is an increase in their utilization by the students. This increment is due to assessment on pharmacology/ pharmacotherapy at the exams, availability of the programs on Internet, and the reputation of the programs.

BENEFIT TO PARTICIPANTS ATTENDING SESSION:

Attendees will learn how clinical pharmacology and pharmacotherapy are taught across a medicine curriculum in a consistent way, using a dynamic database, an interactive program and assignments for therapeutic plan writing. Participants can be encouraged to teach pharmacology (or another basic medical science) in a similar setting and/or cooperate with TRC.

Eline Dubois

Leiden University Medical Center

Onderwijscentrum IG, C5- 53

Albinusdreef 2, C5-Q

2333 ZA Leiden

the Netherlands

Phone: +31 71 5262322

Fax: +31 71 5266857

mailto:E.A.Dubois@lumc.nl

CO-AUTHORS:

Kari Franson*

Joop van Gerven*