Using team based learning (TBL) to teach pharmacology to second year medical students

Abstract

A modified TBL method was incorporated in 2 case based discussion sessions of the pharmacology course that is provided to second year medical students at AUB: (1) a relatively easy drug metabolism and pharmacogenetics session and (2) a more challenging pharmacokinetics session. Individual and group answers for all cases were recorded and an evaluation form was collected. Students provided consistently more positive feedback for the drug metabolism session than for the pharmacokinetics session (e.g. 95% vs. 73% respectively, indicated they benefited considerably or more). The teaching and learning processes in both TBL sessions were considerably more interactive than in regular case based discussions. TBL appeared to be a less successful approach in the pharmacokinetics session compared with the drug metabolism session in that the group deliberations did not consistently improve outcome over individual performance. Overall, it appeared that the difficulty of the questions determined the degree of success, with a range of 30‐70% difficulty level being the most appropriate. This study describes the first application of TBL in a pharmacology course at AUB. The greater difficulty of the pharmacokinetics session and the lack of familiarity with the topic rendered TBL not as successful an experience as anticipated. The results provide clues to optimal design of cases and problems for TBL, so that the experience is beneficial and well received by students.