Modeling with Medicinal Chemistry: Practical Innovative Technology-based Activity to Enhance Student’s Learning Through Inter-Departmental Collaboration: PART I

Background: Concepts of formulary management and its applications in clinical practice is a challenge faced by many first professional year pharmacy students. This challenge may be attributed to a lack of foundational knowledge and practical skills at this level. Preparing students for lifelong learning mandates early exposure to practical application of concepts. This warrants the need for students to integrate knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes in clinical practice. As a result, a state-of-the-art one stop shopping structure of the day (SOD) activity was created for P1 pharmacy students to enable the authors to assess their skill sets. Objective: The objective of the study was to assess the impact of this technique on students’ ability to integrate science into practice. Methods: An institutionally structured curriculum permits concurrent administration of standalone but related courses through inter-departmental collaboration. Connecting the dots in drug information, medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, and pharmacokinetics was identified as a creative means to accomplish this goal. A comprehensive literature search to identify existing models was conducted in PubMed, International Pharmaceutical Abstract (IPA), Embase, Cumulative Index in Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and alternate resources from inception to 2013 without success. A Pre-class interactive technology-based “Structure of the Day” activity was created utilizing the Moodle course platform, Accelrys®, and SoftChalk® software. Students identified functional groups on new molecular entities, determined the relationships to pharmacological properties, pharmacokinetic profiles, and their applications to drug formulary management. Application activities via in-class discussions and debate were implemented to assess knowledge, attitude and ability to integrate the basic sciences into a skill-building activity. Results:The expected outcome was captured through the sequential activities facilitated by an audience response system. The overall results of the study were promising and positive. The assessment on knowledge, ability, skills and attitude ranged from 72% to 95%. Conclusion: The investigators plan to implement this technique in the curriculum