Nurturing critical‐thinking skills with clinical applications in a medical pharmacology course

Abstract

Background: An approach to teaching Medical Pharmacology was developed to nurture critical thinking skills and foster long‐term retention of information. Description: A strategy to augment formal lecturing was implemented by encouraging information‐gathering and discussions centeredon clinical themes. Activities included visits with local clinicians, viewing of video‐taped programs, computerized patient simulations, and assignments to stimulate information‐gathering and discussion. Evaluations: Four student groups that have completed the course performed well in pharmacology on Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensure Examination compared with other teaching sites at Indiana University School of Medicine. Furthermore, these students performed better than what would be predicted from their undergraduate grade‐point averages and past performance on the Medical College Admission Test using the same comparison groups.

Conclusions: Board examination results consistently indicated that retention of information was above average and that achievement was greater than predicted by past performance criteria.