Concepts in Medical Pharmacology

Purpose: This wiki is intended to be an open discussion to define the major concepts in medical pharmacology. As pointed out by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, a traditional teacher concentrates on teaching factual knowledge with the assumption that expert-like thinking about the subject will come along for free or are already present. However, research indicates that students are passing courses by memorizing facts & using problem-solving recipes, practices that rely upon short-term memory, and which do not result in long-term retention, or learning to think like an expert (Wieman, 2007). This situation is becoming increasingly more problematic due to the virtual explosion of scientific knowledge over the past few decades, and the resulting increase of cognitive overload faced by today's students, especially those in a medical curriculum. Groups of experts in many different scientific disciplines, ranging from Physics to Developmental Biology, have come to the conclusion that the best solution to this problem is to re-focus teaching on concepts vs. facts, and to change classroom practices to get students actively engaged in thinking deeply about concepts and their application. See "Statement of the Problem" for more information on this topic. In order to accomplish this goal, one first has to establish what the key concepts are. While this has been accomplished in many other disciplines, it has yet to be accomplished for the field of pharmacology, or medical pharmacology in particular. This wiki is designed to be an open discussion to help answer the question: "what are the major concepts in medical pharmacology?

"One tends to forget facts, but concepts, once understood, tend to remain in long-term memory".

Concept: An idea that can be applied in multiple contexts to explain and/or predict outcomes (Carl Wieman in Wood, 2008).

About This Wiki Project: To learn more about this project, follow these links:

Statement of the Problem

Table of Contents

• Basic Principles of Pharmacology
• Anti-inflammatory Drugs
• Antibiotics
• Antifungals
• Antivirals
• ANS Pharmacology
• CV Pharmacology
• Renal Pharmacology
• Pulmonary Pharmacology
• GI Pharmacology
• CNS Pharmacology
• Endocrine Pharmacology
• Toxicology

References:

• Wieman C: Why not try a scientific approach to science education? Change - The Magazine of Higher Learning. 39(5):9-15 2007. (Also reproduced on Dr. Wieman's blog).
  
• Wood WB: Teaching concepts versus facts in developmental biology. Cell Biol Educ 7:10-16, Spring 2008.