Teaching medicinal chemistry to meet outcome objectives for pharmacy students

Pharmacy practice demands that pharmacists draw upon competencies and outcomes that enable them to perform the functions that support the delivery of pharmaceutical care. Many pharmacy schools have established specific outcome objectives for their students based on published pharmaceutical care func-tions, practice skills and revised accreditation standards. To meet these objectives, students must exam-ine clinical situations rationally and logically, then gather, organize, interpret and analyze data pertinent to the patient in question. Students must be competent to make judgements and therapeutic decisions based on available data, learn from past problem solving successes and failures, and integrate knowledge to improve the quality of life for patients. Schools and colleges of pharmacy must ensure that the faculty responsible for instructing in the basic pharmaceutical sciences emphasize not only the core science that underpins their discipline, but also the relevance of that science to the contemporary practice of the pro-fession. The Structurally-Based Therapeutic Evaluation (SBTE) of drugs was introduced in the medicinal chemistry courses at Creighton University in 1995, and reported to interested audiences in 1997. We believe that this instructional approach to medicinal chemistry is one way to help faculty bring practical rel-evance to the scientific classroom, and encourage students to meet practice-based outcomes with an understanding of the scientific rationale behind the practice decisions they will make as professionals