Clinically relevant medicine label-based exercises: a friendly bridge between medicinal chemistry and pharmacotherapeutics

Abstract

[EN] Aims. To make the students of Medicinal Chemistry (MC) course for doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) understand how strongly connected the chemical properties of drugs are to their clinical profiles and therapeutics, and determine students’ satisfaction degree. Design. Students in the spring 2013 section of the MC course were taught in a traditional teacher-centered manner. Students in the spring 2015 and 2016 ones had additional guided clinically relevant medicine label-based exercises. They worked in structured self-selected teams and chemically explained the clinical aspects of the selected drugs during oral communication sessions. They were given a 1 to 4 Likert-type scale satisfaction questionnaire, the data were collected and statistically treated. Results. The project was useful to show the connection between the chemical aspects of drugs and their clinical profiles (mean=3.33±0.65) and globally satisfactory (mean=3.07±0.47). The additional didactic material helped the students in the spring 2016 make the most of the MC course (mean=3.38±0.74, p=0.002). Conclusions. Medicine label-based exercises seem to be helpful to understand the connection between medicinal chemistry and pharmacotherapeutics. Feedback from students is generally quite favourable. The approach taken will continue to be modified and expanded.