Problem with pharmacology

[Hoomansha]

Hello all, l'm an assistant professor of nursing from Tehran university, in our bachelor nursing curriculum, pharmacology (3 units) is presented in the semester 2, this lesson is taught by pharmacologists, the problem is that the feedbacks of our students are not good with this lesson, they often complain that they don't received what they need about clinical pharmacology, they say that the pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics of drugs are not useful for clinical care, sometimes they tell us that they want a nursing faculty teach them not a pharmacologist! because the approach of nursing faculties is more clinical than pharmacologists. Have you ever such problem? How we can handle it? Thanks

[delawaremalenurse]

Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics are the mainstays of pharmacology and necessary to learning the subject. What the students appear to be complaining about is the lack of relevancy to nursing...they're not seeing the connection between didactics and application of what they're learning to the clinical setting.

I would suggest that more "scenario" type learning be implemented which would allow the students to apply the information they're learning in order to see that understanding how a drug works, what it does, how it safely administered, that nursing interventions need to be considered and implemented, identifying and recognizing side effects or adverse effects, etc.

These scenarios could be through case studies, problem-based learning studies, simulation labs, etc. Anything that would be interactive and demonstrated to the students that understanding and applying the principles pharmacology is integral to providing safe and effective patient care.

Your Pharmacologists may or may not be able to do this depending on their experiences. You may need to assign a nursing co-instructor to the course or do some cross-curriculum training between nursing and pharmacology so that your objectives are addressed and material is reviewed for relevancy.

[Hoomansha]

Delawaremalenurse,Thank you, it is a good and useful suggestion for me