Pharmacotheraphy to Clinical Therapeutics: Preparation for Clinical Clerkship

Abstract

Introduction: Pharmacy students in RCMP learned Pharmacotherapy (PT) and Clinical Therapeutics (CTs). PT is the treatment of health conditions using medications, and CTs is about medicines used to identify, prevent and treat diseases/disorders, similar to PT but is taught as case-based learning (CBL). Objective: The aim is to prepare the students with applied clinical cases prior to clinical clerkship in Year 4. Method: PT is divided into six courses and lessons start from Year 2 onwards. Topics comprise of GIT-respiratory, endocrine-ENT, infectious diseases (ID), nervous systems, cardiovascular-renal, and cancer treatment. CTs is divided into 2 courses; CTi and C2. Students must learned PT prior to CTs, to ensure they can apply the CBL clinical cases in CTs. Cases in CTs comprise of CVS-Renal, endocrine, haematology, psychiatric, GIT-respiratory, ID and other related conditions. CBL-cases are developed based on hospital real cases, hence students apply the knowledge of PT to CTs to solve problems. Results: We found that students performed well in the CBL discussions in CTs and able to apply the PT knowledge to the courses. It was also found that students are more prepared and able to identify problems in clinical clerkship using the case-structure forms according to CBL. Conclusion: PT subjects and CTs are both vital to prepare students prior to clinical clerkship, but CTs provided more in-depth understanding of clinical pharmacy based on CBL activities.