IMPACT OF TEACHING CLINICAL ASPECTS OF CARDIOVASCULAR PHARMACOLOGY AT BEDSIDE

Introduction: Medical students of present era have to prove their efficiency in every step of life. To do so one has to become a competent doctor. This is possible only with the proper knowledge and application of the rational therapeutics in clinical practice. This can happen when the students are motivated and taught medicine in such a way that can produce better learning. The clinical aspect of medicine is usually touched in very theoretical way at present. This way of teaching pharmacology lacks the proper correlation of medicine and the disease (and patient). Students are hesitant in using the drugs related to cardiovascular system and are unable to handle the cardiovascular emergencies. Students practice irrational therapeutics. With this background idea, this project was taken up to enable our students to get better understanding of medicines. The project was a type of pilot study of its own kind to explore new mode of supportive teaching of pharmacology. Aim and Objectives: To know the impact of bedside teaching of clinical aspects of cardiovascular pharmacology. Methodology: The students were divided in three groups of 20 students in each group. Each group was taught cardiovascular pharmacology in didactic lectures as routine in the lecture theatre simultaneously. This was followed by either tutorial classes of cardiovascular pharmacology or bedside teaching of the same. A total of four chapters were considered for the project. After covering two chapters the groups were crossover. Third group worked as control and was on tutorial classes throughout the study. Assessments were done four times (Pre intervention assessment, after the completion of first two chapters, after completion of two more chapters, after a gap of one month from the last test). The preintervention assessment was to remove the data of students with extremes. (Too good or Too poor).  Results: Three batches of students were selected with 20 students in each. The assessment results show that the students taught at bed side had more information regarding the clinical aspects. The most important finding was that the dosage form and dose remembrance of important drugs was much high in the group which was taught by bedside as compared to the tutorials. Conclusions:  The project is only a type of pilot study. We need more such type of study from the other faculty members, other departments as well as other institutes. Then only we can draw any firm conclusion regarding the impact of this type of teaching of clinical aspects of pharmacology. Simultaneously due to constraint of time and resources the feasibility issues are major challenges.