PHARMACOETHICS A Problem-Based Approach

About 20 years ago, the University of New Mexico School of Medicine (SOM) established a student-centered problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum emphasizing ambulatory care practice competencies. It was designed for small groups of students working together and ran parallel with their more traditional curriculum. The SOM faculty pioneered difficult changes that also paved the way for changes at the SOM’s affiliated College of Pharmacy (COP). Subsequently, other COPs (e.g., at Samford University) have faced the difficult challenge of conversion of their curriculum. Those teachers who have undertaken to embrace this new type of learning usually have done so on the basis of a personal educational philosophy that was in line with student-centered problem-based learning. To many pharmacy professors, their students may have seemed bored and dissatisfied with their professional education and viewed the process as difficult and with irrelevant “hurdles” that have to be overcome to become a registered pharmacist. Students may have had too much emphasis on memorization and seemed to forget readily what was taught them