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About 20 years ago, the University of New Mexico School of Medicine (SOM)
established a student-centered problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum
emphasizing ambulatory care practice competencies. It was designed for small
groups of students working together and ran parallel with their more traditional
curriculum. The SOM faculty pioneered difficult changes that also paved the
way for changes at the SOM’s affiliated College of Pharmacy (COP).
Subsequently, other COPs (e.g., at Samford University) have faced the
difficult challenge of conversion of their curriculum. Those teachers who have
undertaken to embrace this new type of learning usually have done so on the
basis of a personal educational philosophy that was in line with student-centered
problem-based learning. To many pharmacy professors, their students may have
seemed bored and dissatisfied with their professional education and viewed the
process as difficult and with irrelevant “hurdles” that have to be overcome to
become a registered pharmacist. Students may have had too much emphasis on
memorization and seemed to forget readily what was taught them.
The method you are asked to use for learning has a strong influence on how
well you will be able to recall and apply what you have learned in the “real
world” outside your COP. Problem-based learning can better help you become
an independent thinker. It can help you reason through your patient’s problems
and recall and apply what you have been taught in your COP to care for your
patients. Finally, it can help you learn new information, as you need it, and keep
your knowledge and skills contemporary.
Due to the changing nature of the practice of pharmacy, today's pharmacists, pharmaceutical scientists, and researchers are faced with an increasing amount of ethical dilemmas. Pharmacoethics: A Problem Based Approach not only introduces the current ethical issues, it also provides decision making tools that can be applied to any ethical issue that may arise in the future.
The authors have identified seven clinical and research ethical competencies that pharmacists will face in their practice: professional responsibility, patient's rights, privacy and confidentiality, truth telling, reproductive ethics, distributive justice, and research ethics. They present 18 problem-based learning cases drawn from the literature and developed around these competencies. These cases use ill-structured ethical problems to demonstrate the types of dilemmas found in modern pharmaceutical practice and help readers acquire the critical decision making and communication skills they need to deal with them.
Unlike most texts that concentrate only on ethical principles and ethical decision-making, this book goes a step further. It demonstrates how to use motivational interviewing techniques to work through difficult ethical situations and attain a positive clinical, behavioral, and social outcome. Exploring issues that range from professional responsibility to patient's rights, Pharmacoethics: A Problem Based Approach provides a framework for developing the critical set of patient-related skills necessary for the practice of pharmacy. |
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