CASE BASED, LEARNER-CENTERED APPROACH TO PHARMACOTHERAPY

Introduction: The incorporation of real problems into health education is seen as an effort to prepare future health professionals to meet the challenging demands of the profession, in particular, the provision of quality patient care. The founding’s of these methodology can be traced back to Dewey. The author suggested that students should be presented with real life problems and in order to discover the information required to solve them. Further more, Dewey encouraged reflection as a process that should be used when solving problems. Furthermore the author recognized that logical or analytical reflection can take place only when there is a real problem to be solved.

Purpose: With the introduction of the Bologna Process in Portugal, the School of Allied Health Sciences of Oporto, saw this opportunity to put in practice Dewey´s axiom. This paper represents a small part in the process of integrating a Case Based, Learner Centered approach to Pharmacotherapy.
Description: Since 2008, Pharmacotherapy is no longer taught in a lecture based model. With the implementation of Bologna Process in the Pharmacy Degree, some basic Science curricular units maintained their lecture based approach, only to serve as mediators to a more student-centered approach in the applications of knowledge to real life situations. Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy, are good examples of this dichotomy. Normally the students have to attend lectures on pharmacology topics during the week, then in the next week, they will have to collaborative solve a real problem ( relating to last week Pharmacology topics) during a pre-established time, in the presence of a tutor.
Course Structure: The cases are in paper format, and they are adapted or based in real life situations. They are normally ill-defined so that the students can discover what course of action to pursue. For all cases there are some orientations that are provided by the tutor, that are previously constructed under Bloom’s Taxonomy. The tutor himself, must have certain characteristics that permit him/her to be in this situation. Normally for tutor selection we endorse that besides the pedagogical background, he/she has an active role in professional activities outside the School.The class is divided in case-study groups of about 4 students. Normally there are 4 groups in each class. The allocation of students to groups is random. Development of an appreciation of group dynamics of is an important element of the course, and best achieved if students had to work with colleagues who they did not necessarily know well. At the end of the case study, each case-study group was interviewed by a faculty member. Individual questions were directed to a specific student, with some additional general questions open for anyone in the group to answer. Evaluation and assessment is divided in case study grading, mini-test grading and examination grading.

Discussion: Results show that gradings tend to increase from second year to the third year in the bachelor degree, despite the raised level of complexity, which can demonstrate that a student centered approach is a favorable mean to promote reflexive thinking and develop high order epistemic beliefs.