PHARM 200 - PHARMACOLOGY

[84 Hours]

This course is designed to present the student with a broad overview of pharmacology with an emphasis on its application to the practice of medicine. The objective of the course is to provide the student with a basis for understanding drug actions, desired as well as undesired, so that they will be prepared to use therapeutic agents in a rational manner throughout the span of their practice. Although the importance of basic concepts and principles are recognized, straight facts and their applications must also be learned and an ability to integrate information concerning one class of drugs with another must be demonstrated. The course begins with a treatment of general pharmacologic principles that apply to all drugs. This is followed by lectures on specific drug classes and the application of specific agents for the prevention and treatment of disease states. Throughout the course general topics relating to all drug classes are revisited by considering such issues as the influences of disease states, age and other factors on drug disposition and action. The philosophy of the department is that drug development changes rapidly while basic principles evolve and change more slowly, and that by understanding the latter, the student will be able to keep up with the former. Not only does the number of new drugs introduced into medicine continue to expand, but use of older agents endures. In order to live with this expanding number of drugs, we focus on teaching on prototypical drugs, pointing out how other agents vary from the most important agents of their class.