Abstract:

When starting the Pharmacology course in the second year of Medicine, the teachers have the task of promoting the learning of the technical language of the pharmacological discipline, correcting ambiguities and explaining the extensive field of Pharmacology. The authors ask ourselves what is the social representation of: "Pharmacology" that second year students have? This exercise is carried out at the beginning of the school year, we assume that at the end of the Pharmacology course, the social representation of the students will change. Methodology: we use the Natural Semantic Networks in this investigation. The values were calculated: J Value, total count of defining concepts. M value, frequency of use of the defining concept, the semantic value SAM Group, defining concepts with greater semantic weight. G value indicates the dispersion of what is expressed in each group and the FMG value, the semantic distance of the defining, expressed as a percentage. Results: The J value was 76 different defining concepts, the SAM group consisted of: Drug M = 2330, FMG = 100% Pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics value M = 152, FMG = 6.52%, Treatment, M = 65 FMG = 2.78%, Study M = 49 FMG = 2.1% and Pickups M = 37, FMG = 1.58%. Conclusions: Second year students do not know the pharmacological foundations or the technical vocabulary of this discipline. The word stimulus was "Pharmacology" and the participants wrote the words in decreasing hierarchical order: drug, medicine, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, treatment, study and pills. That shows a typical social representation of everyday life. For teachers it will be a starting point in the planning process of the classes, the contents and the language that they will have to incorporate during the course.

Keywords:

Natural Semantic Networks, Pharmacology, Social representation.