What is your answer to that if you have portfolios to do, with questions like this one here:
Ms. GSS, 26, driving her new car to Sri Petaling, is waiting at the traffic lights near Bukit Jalil stadium. The lights change to green. She releases the brake and starts to move forward. Suddenly she hears sirens behind her and in the rearview mirror sees a police motorcycle-led cavalcade making its way through the traffic queue. She reluctantly changes direction, moving to the kerbside to make way for the convoy.
1. Draw diagrams of the neural pathways involved in GSS’s sensory perceptions and actions in the scenario.
2. What are the consequences to GSS’s vision and hearing if she suffers-
a) a spinal injury in the lumbar vertebrae?
b) an injury which affects the auditory cortex?
I nearly died answering that question. It was a 2000-word portfolio, mind you. Of course it wasn’t that bad, but I thought we would benefit more if it was more of a pharmacological-based question. Well, isn’t that what we are supposed to be specialised in? Sometimes I feel that we are learning too much of anatomy and physiology, and thus, neglecting the pharmacologic aspects.
Now that portfolio days are over (for this semester), I can breathe a sigh of relief. However, I cannot relax just yet. There’re still millions of things to do. Management for the Pharmacist project is one, class test is another, and of course, not forgetting the few remaining PBLs. And yes, talking about PBLs, we now have a new system called the e-PBL. Seems like everything has to have something to do with the internet eh? Even our PBLs and portfolios aren’t spared?
I’ve always thought that the main purpose of PBL is to train us how to speak, how to interact with people, how to carry out a discussion professionally, and how to put forward our ideas in a way that isn’t offensive. Well, as mentioned in the educational objectives of the PBL: “…to develop communication skills (ie able to listen, explain, answer, respond, discuss, defend effectively in professional manner” , isn’t that supposed to be the main basis of having a PBL? So, why e-PBL now?
Maybe I’m just being pessimistic. After all, everything’s going global now, with everything having an “e-” prefix. But what can one do when one gets a PBL trigger like this??? This trigger is nothing like the usual trigger we get.
A ‘fridge’ for the staff
As the Drug Information Pharmacist you are also the Secretary to the hospital Drug & Therapeutics Committee. The remit of this Committee includes assessing medicinal products for possible inclusion in the Hospital Formulary; and also, to contain the size of the annual drugs budget. Your colleague, the Purchasing & Stores Pharmacist, is the other member of the Pharmacy Department on the Committee.
Recently you put forward a proposal for the inclusion of a generic version of gliclazide tablets 40mg. You supported this proposal using data from the manufacturer, GenEquiv, showing comparable bioequivalence with the market leader, Diamicron®. At last week’s meeting the Committee accepted your proposal, and directed that the next Drug & therapeutics Bulletin (published monthly by Drug Information, and distributed to all doctors and pharmacists in the hospital) should recommend the use of this much cheaper generic equivalent instead of Diamicron.
Yesterday the Marketing Manager of GenEquiv rang your Chief Pharmacist to express his satisfaction that a major product in the GenEquiv portfolio had “made it” into the Hospital Formulary. The Manager said that GenEquiv wished to express its thanks by underwriting the expenses for you and your colleague in Purchasing to attend a forthcoming major pharmacy conference in Sydney. He would also like to present the Pharmacy Department with a microwave oven and a ‘fridge, for use in the staff room. Finally he wanted to make an appointment to discuss other GenEquiv generics for consideration for the Formulary.
Today your Chief Pharmacist has called you and the Purchasing Pharmacist in to his office to discuss formulating departmental policy on handling “inducements from pharmaceutical companies”.
To be honest, I do not know where to start. I NEED HELP!!! And worse, the PBL session is going to be carried out online. I wonder how it’s going to be like then. I really wonder.
5 Comments
October 9, 2007 at 11:34 am
Discount Pharmacy http://www.drugshome.org Discount Pharmacy Online.
October 27, 2007 at 3:03 pm
r u a sem 5 pharmacy student from imu?
November 3, 2007 at 11:03 am
You guys have PBL too? I hate PBL. I am not understanding how your PBL will occur online though…..
April 2, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Holy…..crap…..
Well…for a start, since you’re going to be stuck in Government for at least 4 years doing the nonsense job that was listed up there, you might want to take a look at the General Order for Civil Servants about accepting inducements, gifts etc…
Ooops…the name in Bahasa Malaysia is of course Perintah Am. You’ll find this law book in most major bookstores…especially MPH.
Good luck.
April 12, 2008 at 12:51 am
[...] cycle is just never-ending. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy studying pharmacy, but sometimes the workload can really kill! Sleep deprivation is another problem. I think by the time I graduate, most of my brain neurons [...]