Teaching clinical therapeutics in early clinical years: Is it worth it?

Location

Auditorium Pond Side

Start Date

26-2-2014 10:30 AM

Abstract

Introduction and Background: Learning clinical pharmacology and therapeutics in early clinical years can be very challenging as students find it difficult to apply their pharmacological knowledge to individual patients in a clinical setting 1 Final year students base their choice of drugs on example provided by their teachers mainly because of a lack of experience. 2Application of Clinical Therapeutics is an essential and important skill that should be taught in early clinical years to teach students rational drug selection.

The students of AKU receive pharmacology lectures in preclinical years. In order to introduce the medical student’s to rational use of common drugs, clinical therapeutics session was introduced in the General Medicine clerkship (Year 3). In this way they will be able to gain knowledge sequentially and in a learning context.

Objectives: To evaluate the utility of clinical therapeutic sessions in early clinical years

Method: Retrospective cohort study was conducted. The evaluations of each specialty session were looked into. The students filled a questionnaire regarding the sessions on a rating scale

Results: Descriptive analysis was done, n= 117. SPSS version 19 was used to analyze the data 76% (n=89) of the students rated the utility of the sessions to be around 76%, whereas 14% (n=17) of the students rated the usefulness to be around 60% and 9% (n=11) found it useful around 85%.

Conclusion: Presenting students with clinical therapeutic problems early during undergraduate training will not only give them a chance to gain experience in solving medical problems but will also give meaning to what they are studying as opposed to merely reproducing what they learn or copying what they are told.

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Feb 26th, 10:30 AM

Teaching clinical therapeutics in early clinical years: Is it worth it?

Auditorium Pond Side

Introduction and Background: Learning clinical pharmacology and therapeutics in early clinical years can be very challenging as students find it difficult to apply their pharmacological knowledge to individual patients in a clinical setting 1 Final year students base their choice of drugs on example provided by their teachers mainly because of a lack of experience. 2Application of Clinical Therapeutics is an essential and important skill that should be taught in early clinical years to teach students rational drug selection.

The students of AKU receive pharmacology lectures in preclinical years. In order to introduce the medical student’s to rational use of common drugs, clinical therapeutics session was introduced in the General Medicine clerkship (Year 3). In this way they will be able to gain knowledge sequentially and in a learning context.

Objectives: To evaluate the utility of clinical therapeutic sessions in early clinical years

Method: Retrospective cohort study was conducted. The evaluations of each specialty session were looked into. The students filled a questionnaire regarding the sessions on a rating scale

Results: Descriptive analysis was done, n= 117. SPSS version 19 was used to analyze the data 76% (n=89) of the students rated the utility of the sessions to be around 76%, whereas 14% (n=17) of the students rated the usefulness to be around 60% and 9% (n=11) found it useful around 85%.

Conclusion: Presenting students with clinical therapeutic problems early during undergraduate training will not only give them a chance to gain experience in solving medical problems but will also give meaning to what they are studying as opposed to merely reproducing what they learn or copying what they are told.