Therapeutics

[DRx Niceguy]

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I'm wondering about how therapeutics is like in pharmacy schools across the nation. Please post a reply of what school you are from and if the course is offered? If so how many units of course work is involved in total? When is it offered to you? I'm just trying to get a feel for the course that I am about to be taking this coming fall at MCPHS Worcester.

 

[pinkyrx]

I personally thought that Therapeutics was less difficult than Pharmacology, but that was because there was less "list memorizing" and you were tested more on actually learning and understanding concepts.

 

[DRx Niceguy]

I personally thought that Therapeutics was less difficult than Pharmacology, but that was because there was less "list memorizing" and you were tested more on actually learning and understanding concepts.

thanks...uh what school do you go to?

 

[dgroulx]

Therapeutics was our hardest class. We needed to know diseases, drugs, correct dosages for that disease, etc. At UF we have six semesters of therapeutics. The last semester is taken after we complete rotations, so we can learn from our combined experiences.

 

[genesis09]

For us, therapeutics, pharmacology, and relevant pathophysiology is all in one series of classes, Principles of Drug Action and Therapeutics. We have 8 semesters of that course.

 

[WVUPharm2007]

We have a 4 semester Pathophys/Therapetics during years 2&3. Pharmacology and Med Chem are different courses all together.

 

[shal]

Therapeutics is the one class that has all my classmates scared! We take it for 3 quarters before going on rotations and need to know disease states, dosages, contraindications and all the other good stuff. It combines the pharmacology knowledge from the previous quarter, so basically whatever we learned in pharmacology last quarter is being used this quarter. We had our final today and I am just hoping that I pass. Am glad that its on a curve. I never had to worry about passing with other classes.

Does anyone else have oral exams for Therapeutics? We have 1 for midterm and 1 for final. Until last year, they used to give a case with a few disease states, 1 patient education, 1 drug induced problem. You had only 30 minutes to soap out the entire case and devise a dosing regimen for everything, figure out drug induced problem. All of this needed to be done from memory. Then you go present the case to a faculty member. I have heard that people were throwing up due to the pressure. This year they changed it (so glad) and we get the case the evening before.

 

[sdn1977]

Therapeutics is the one class that has all my classmates scared! We take it for 3 quarters before going on rotations and need to know disease states, dosages, contraindications and all the other good stuff. It combines the pharmacology knowledge from the previous quarter, so basically whatever we learned in pharmacology last quarter is being used this quarter. We had our final today and I am just hoping that I pass. Am glad that its on a curve. I never had to worry about passing with other classes.

Does anyone else have oral exams for Therapeutics? We have 1 for midterm and 1 for final. Until last year, they used to give a case with a few disease states, 1 patient education, 1 drug induced problem. You had only 30 minutes to soap out the entire case and devise a dosing regimen for everything, figure out drug induced problem. All of this needed to be done from memory. Then you go present the case to a faculty member. I have heard that people were throwing up due to the pressure. This year they changed it (so glad) and we get the case the evening before.

I took that same class my third year at UCSF many decades ago & the exams were exactly the same - oral - all of them with 30 min of preparation. It was great practice for 4th year.

My fourth year, we had to present one case per week orally which was chosen by our preceptor the day before the presentation. It took a few weeks to get comfortable with the oral presentation, but you catch on fast & learn how to present concise, relevant information.

At the end of each rotation, each student - medicine & pharmacy presented one case to the whole group - the medical & pharmacy attendings, all the medical residents, the pharmacy resident & the medical intern - very stressful! Obviously, the medical student had different perspectives than we did so it was very interesting when it wasn't you doing it!

 

[dgroulx]

Our third year (semesters 4 & 5) was all oral, except for some graded SOAPE notes. There weren't any exams. You just sat in class every day praying that your name wasn't called. I made C's in both semesters and of course it was worth the majority of credit hours.

When we come back from rotations, we'll take semester 6. This is all student case presentations. I was assigned a topic before I went and will have to do a 45 minute lecture on a case. I still haven't found the patient I will be using. We also have a back-up topic. For this topic, we need to design questions to grill fellow students who lecture on that topic.