A team of professors from the Pharmacology department at NOVA Medical School has used a multidisciplinary approach to identify core concepts of pharmacokinetics - a fundamental area in medical training - to be integrated into the curriculum of the Integrated Master's Degree in Medicine, with the potential to improve clinical practice.
Pharmacokinetics - which studies the absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion of drugs in the body - continues to represent one of the greatest challenges in the teaching of pharmacology. This difficulty stems mainly from the complexity of understanding and applying it in a clinical context by students, the variability of pharmacokinetics content in the existing bibliography, and the lack of a clear definition of core concepts suitable for medical teaching, as well as their inclusion in integrated medical curricula.
The study, recently published in the European Journal of Pharmacology and led by NOVA Medical School professor Sofia Pereira, sought to define strategies appropriate for medical education through a multidisciplinary approach focused on identifying core concepts of pharmacokinetics.
The work involved 170 professionals from 21 countries, including pharmacologists who teach at medical schools and clinicians from five medical specialties (gastroenterology, general and family medicine, intensive care medicine, internal medicine, and nephrology) not involved in teaching pharmacology.
Based on a structured list of concepts developed and validated for this study, participants ranked the essential concepts by relative relevance. The results highlight the concepts considered by consensus to be most relevant, but also reveal some differences between the academic perspective and clinical practice, as well as between the various medical specialties, reinforcing the importance of a multidisciplinary definition of curriculum content.
NOVA Medical School not only reaffirms its commitment to demanding medical training aligned with the real needs of future medical doctors, but is also a global pioneer in updating and adapting pharmacokinetic content for clinicians.
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The study “Defining core concepts in pharmacokinetics for undergraduate medical education through a multidisciplinary approach” is available through the following link.