question about pharmacotherapy class

[care bear]

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hi everyone,
i am a med student going on leave for a semester in january. i am doing research, but also considering taking 1-2 interesting classes in the other health professions schools, that i will not really get a chance to take when i return to med school.

one of the classes i am interested in is 'pharmacotherapy for HIV infection'. however, i am not sure if i know enough to take it. there are no listed prereqs, but i'm assuming most students will probably be in pharmacy school. the course # is 100 something, which doesn't sound too intimidating, but then again i have essentially zero pharm background.

what do you guys think? anyone ever taken a class like this, and what did you need to know for it? thanks so much for your help!

(and yes, i know i should just contact the professor and ask, which i plan on doing. but since i was already on sdn. . .😉 )

 

[LVPharm]

I'm currently taking my "therapeutic disease state management" series of courses right now, and although prerequisite knowledge of pharmacology, anatomy, and physiology would be useful, there really is not a great deal of prerequisite knowledge absolutely needed for any of the classes I'm taking. Don't know about pharmacotherapy for HIV, I'll be taking a similar course in Janurary, but I think you'll be fine. They'll probably review the pharmacology, the MOA and dosing of pharmacotherapeutics as they come up in class.

 

[lilmk]

care bear,
if there are no listed pre-reqs, you should be fine. we all walk in to our therapeutics classes knowing nothing anyway (and at SC, sometimes we also leave knowing nothing 🙄 )
but i think you'll be very well prepared as a med student. i HIGHLY doubt it will be too technical for you. (maybe you'll be able to teach them a thing or two 😉 ). no worries.

 

[care bear]

thanks for the replies. they haven't listed the prof yet so i haven't contacted him/her, but i think i'm just gonna go ahead and sign up for it.
after all, i can't do much worse than i was doing in med school this semester 🙂 and it's a really interesting topic, and i won't get a chance to take a class like this for years, if i don't do it next sem. . .
thanks again!

 

[Samoa]

care bear, you should be fine. pharmacotherapy classes focus mostly on how and why particular drugs are used for a disease. In other words, the studies that support their use, selecting the best drug(s) for a particular patient, how to dose and monitor the drugs, when they should be used and when to stop using them.

Usually, pharm students are taught the pathophysiology of a disease along with the pharmacotherapy of it, so if you haven't taken that yet, you'll be OK. You may have difficulty if you haven't taken pharmacology yet, but a good background in physiology can compensate.

On the whole, I think you'll be fine, and you'll have a little bit different perspective on what you're learning. And I'm sure they'll be happy to have you there.