Course Description
Primary, secondary, and tertiary drug information resources, including standard reference texts, computer systems and journals. Emphasis will be placed on retrieval of information and communication of a response.
Athena Title
Survey of Drug Information
Prerequisite
Doctor of Pharmacy student
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Goal: To acquaint the student with drug information sources, retrieval, evaluation, and communication in pharmacy practice. Course objectives: Upon completion of this course, the student should be able to: 1. Conduct a systematic search of the literature using appropriate primary, secondary and tertiary references to retieve information to respond to a specific request. 2. Identify and utilize references that are most likely to contain the information necessary to answer a question. 3. Classify questions to most effectively obtain appropriate background information and to most efficiently conduct a search. 4. Demonstrate the ability to electronically search MedLine, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts and MICROMEDEX. 5. Evaluate the quality of internet web sites. 6. Explain the peer review process for evaluation of primary literature and identify factors necessary to insure the validity of a clinical study. 7. Discuss legal and ethical considerations in providing drug information. 8. List sources of continuing education for pharmacists available in print or via the internet.
Topical Outline
1. Introduction to drug information 2. Search strategies 3. Types of resources 4. General references 5. Drug information and the internet 6. Therapeutics and efficacy questions 7. Adverse drug reactions, poisoning and toxicology questions 8. Nonprescription medication and consumer resources 9. Availability, foreign medications and drug identification references 10. Drug interactions 11. Special populations 12. Legal and ethical issues Labs 1. Tertiary resources 2. Electronic resources 3. Primary literature evaluation
Syllabus