Comprehensive disease state reviews: A guide to live and virtual implementation in a therapeutics course
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46542/pe.2024.241.332339Keywords:
Cardiology, Education, Pharmacotherapy, Pharmacy educationAbstract
Background: Pharmacy curricula often teach disease states in silos, covering one disease at a time. This approach may inadequately prepare students for caring for patients with multiple coinciding disease states. The purpose of this “how-to” guide is to detail an approach to implementing a comprehensive, capstone-style disease state review into pharmacy therapeutics courses.
Methods: This manuscript describes the use of a drug-class review, individual disease-state patient cases, and then layered, multi-disease-state cases that build upon individual cases in an integrated cardiovascular pharmacotherapy course. It also describes pre- and post-test assessments to supplement learning outcomes.
Results: The educational activity significantly improved student performance between the pre- and post-tests. Informal feedback indicated appreciation for the real-world applicability of the activity.
Conclusion: While cardiovascular examples are provided, this approach could be integrated into any therapeutics-type course. Benefits for students include providing a space to explore therapeutic decision-making for patients with multiple common, overlapping disease states. Faculty also benefit from this design, as once created, it is a robust and comprehensive review that can be used year after year regardless of changes in guidelines.
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