September 2009 — Volume 3, Issue 5

Maintaining discipline integrity

The complexities of pharmacology teaching methods and curriculum design have finally been addressed, under an ALTC-funded project completed this year.

“Ensuring quality graduates of pharmacology” was led by Associate Professor James Ziogas of the University of Melbourne who said the project had addressed a lot of challenges unique to the pharmacology discipline.

Through the development and execution of a national survey involving 21 universities teaching pharmacology, the project team determined variances and similarities in the content taught, teaching methods, the context in which it is taught and how it is assessed.

“One of the findings was that while pharmacology remains a stand-alone subject in most science degrees, in professional degrees, it is increasingly becoming part of an integrated curriculum,” Associate Professor Ziogas said.

According to Associate Professor Ziogas, in these cases, it is necessary to ensure that discipline integrity is maintained.

“It is important that core pharmacological concepts and skills aren’t diluted by being immersed amongst other subject areas, which can happen in degrees such as medicine,” he said.

Another challenge for the pharmacology discipline, the team discovered, was its unique relationship with industry.

According to Associate Professor Ziogas, pharmacology is a quantitative-heavy discipline with a strong focus on research into drug discovery and development as well as the safe use of medicines.

“In a broad sense, the Australian pharmaceutical industry isn’t as geared towards research as it is overseas. Here it’s more about administering clinical trials of drugs that have already been developed, and that requires a very different set of skills,” he said.

“The Australian industry puts less emphasis on graduates having a research background and on a more intricate scale, the industry has many different sized companies each requiring quite specific skills.”

Adding to the problem is the lack of a peak body for pharmacologists.

“It’s difficult to have an open dialogue with industry at the moment to discuss these issues because there isn’t one major body that adequately represents the different sized companies and their needs,” Associate Professor Ziogas said.

To counter this, the team held three workshops over the course of the project, with the final one in July, “Addressing Workforce Needs”, attended by representatives from the Pharmaceutical Education Council that provided data from industry surveys it had conducted.

The workshop crystallised the need to identify the most appropriate industry bodies to engage in further discussions.

“Rather than having to go cap in hand to industry, the ALTC grant allowed us to say we’re empowered, we want to share our knowledge with you and we want to make things better.”

To help improve the overall teaching quality in the discipline, the project team is also working towards creating
the Australian Pharmacology and Therapeutics Education Network (APTEN).

“APTEN will be a bridge to people who teach pharmacology in their subjects, but don’t have pharmacology as their research speciality and focus so it will help to ensure disciplinary integrity,” Associate Professor Ziogas said.

APTEN is currently a work in progress and will be available online soon.