January 2020
The Medical School is leading a new research project entitled ‘The effect of pharmacology teaching on diverse learners in a problem-based learning medical curriculum (PharmPBL)’. The project received a 146,066.40 Euros grant from the Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation under the Excellence Hubs (EXCELLENCE/0918) call. The project consortium consists of the University of Nicosia Research Foundation (UNRF), as the project host organisation, and St George’s, University of London (SGUL) as the foreign research partner organisation. The duration of the research project is two years, from October 2019 to October 2021.
The UNRF team is led by Dr Soulla Nicolaou, Assistant Professor in Pharmacology, who is also the Project Coordinator. Other UNRF faculty involved in the project are: Prof Peter McCrorie, Dr Stella Nicolaou, Prof Alexia Papageorgiou and Dr Ioulia Televantou. Prof Anthony Alberts and Dr Andrew Hitchings coordinate project-related activities at SGUL.
The current proposal is aimed at investigating whether a problem-based learning (PBL) pharmacology curriculum is able to satisfy the diverse learning needs of medical students in pre-clinical years and to contribute to the development of prescribing skills in clinical years. The diverse student characteristics that may impact learning include, for example, learning style and approach to learning, age, previous experience with PBL, educational background, language and academic ability.
The effectiveness of PBL in addressing diverse learning needs will be evaluated based on two outcomes in first, second, and fourth (final) year medical students at both the UNIC Medical School and SGUL. Firstly, reliable assessments will elucidate the effects of student differences on achieving learning outcomes. Secondly, questionnaires will be developed and validated to assess the satisfaction of learners with PBL-based pharmacology. Statistical analysis will elucidate student characteristics that may impact pharmacology learning. The findings will subsequently inform changes to the curriculum to better support student learning. Ultimately the project aims at reducing medication errors, which compromise patient safety and increase health care costs, by better preparing medical students to become effective and safe prescribers.