Abstract:

The Bologna harmonisation efforts, the increased interest of National Institutes of Health (NIH) in improving the number of pharmacists involved in biomedical translational research and the national and international need to prepare pharmacists for their societal role, leading to improvement of health care and patient safety has lead to a radical transformation of the traditional learning paradigm of higher pharmaceutical education. Thus, the traditional model has changed in the last years to consider the pharmacists students as the centre of their own learning experience using different pedagogical strategies.

The aim of this communication is to propose a problem-based learning (PBL) design based on the pharmacy 5-year undergraduate curriculum to engage students in learning. The development of this project arises from the clear need to improve critical thinking, responsable use of ethical principles, effective research, communication, teamwork and problem-solving skills in the context of higher pharmaceutical education.

This project is intended to be applied vertically, integrating the knowledge of different subjects included in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th year of the Pharmacy degree program (Organic Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Pharmacokinetics and Pharmaceutical Technology). For this purpose, activities based on hands-on learning, development of problem-solving skills, team work presentation and project management (bibliographic research, data collection and analysis) are proposed. Our goal is to build a framework focused on teaching practice and the curriculum of the future pharmacists.

To determine the successful implementation and effectiveness of PBL in a 5-year bachelor of science pharmacy degree program, different tools of assessment are planned throughout the mentioned years. For instance, written reports, program portfolio, lab reports and case-based learning outcomes are considered for evaluating students’ content knowledge, conceptual understanding, courses integration and problem-solving skills development. Additionally, the students and teachers perception of applying this PBL approach as a method to engage students will be collected using validated questionnaires.

Taking into account the design of the PBL described in this work, the main difficulties faced by teachers are related to the adjustment of the activities to the schedule of each subject, the weight of the PBL in the final evaluation of each subject, the presence of repeating students and the identification of the control group. On the other hand, it is foreseen that the development of this pedagogical model will not entail a material-, time- or human-resources consuming, since they are currently carried out in parallel in each subject. In addition, bearing in mind the profile of the adressed students by this methodology and the unquestionable experience of the teachers involved in carrying it out, it is expected to get a motivational increase and an improvement learning in those students after the implementation of the mentioned PBL.

Finally, the vertical implementation of this methodology will allow us to check whether the development of certain skills is effective and persists over time, since they are evaluated in different subjects of successive courses.

Keywords:

PBL, Pharmacy, Undergraduate students, intergrated learning.