Abstract:

Pharmacology is considered essential for pharmacists' professional future, as it is concerned with drug or medication action, considering a drug as a molecule that exerts a biochemical or physiological effect on the cell, tissue, organ or organism (Vallance & Smart, 2006). It has been extensively reported that the use of clinical case reports to illustrate the theorical contents is considered a good practice for increasing the teaching-learning process. In our context, we realized that attendance and participation in clinical case reports resolution classes has been declining, probably due to the availability of their resolution, after the class uploaded in the Moodle platform. Our objective was to deal with the low students' assistance and engagement detected in the subject of Pharmacology and Therapeutics II, located in the 4th year of the Pharmacy degree, consisting of 6 European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS).

Considering all the above-mentioned, we applied a new experience to potentiate the active learning activities based on solving several clinical cases reports in small groups. Students were assigned a clinical case report and were committed to elaborate an infographics with pivotal information for patients suffering from the disease of the clinical case report, with special emphasis on pharmaceutical advice. In addition, some student groups had to prepare a presentation to show to the other students in the classroom the resolution of the clinical case report and the conclusions that they have reached. However, under this strategy all the students had to analyze the clinical case report autonomously, before the case was solved in the classroom. Of note, during the in-class time, the teacher had the role of moderator, favoring debates around medication need, assessment of benefit-risk ratio of the treatments and any other aspect related to the clinical case report. In consequence, our students were learning pharmacology with two different teaching strategies, problem-solving and service learning, as they had to disentangle a clinical case report, as well as, design an infographics as a manner to contribute to health education to society.

This strategy demonstrated positive outcomes for both, students and teachers, as we received positive feedback of this activity, attendance at sessions increased, and also students had better grades compared to students of the previous year, who worked in the traditional manner. On the one hand, the number of correct answers was higher, but remarkably, the number of errors decreased by almost half, as well as the number of blank answers, both for students who underwent a single assessment at the end of the semester, and for the ones that chose continuous evaluation.

In conclusion, increasing the students’ engagement by involving students in the resolution and presentation of the clinic case reports to their peers, motivated and helped university students to better acquire worked knowledge and develop pharmacist’s skills.

Keywords:

Pharmacology, clinical case reports, service learning, problem-based learning, pharmaceutical advice, skills.