Selection of information resources for education in medical pharmacology

Pharmacology is the foundation science of medical pharmacotherapy. Education in medical pharmacology (EP) requires the use of information resources (IR) to meet the challenge of the continuous introduction of new drugs and new educational, didactic and pedagogical theories to enhance knowledge. Hence criteria for selecting bibliographic material for EP should be clearly outlined and implemented. In this work we present a method to select IR for EP based on systems theory and focusing on the factors determining: (a) the integration of a list of recommended IR for EP; (b) the design of the acquisition list for faculty and students work; (c) the overall organization of the resources available for its optimal use and benefit in the educational process; and (d) a general strategy for assessing the impact of the bibliographic infrastructure. The proposal is based on information from: (i) lists of recommended readings in the academic program of the Pharmacology course given at the School of Medicine of UNAM in the last 30 years; (ii) the extent of discipline development measured by two indexes derived from the contents of Goodman and Gilman's "Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics" (G & G); (iii) the number of texts currently found in the collection of FM-UNAM which are classified in the section of Pharmacology using the Library of Congress Classification System (LCCS); and (iv) the comparison of academic versus standardized classification of pharmacology topics, such as Medical Subject Heading (MESH) and LCCS The importance of this proposal relates to its usefulness for EP and for other medical disciplines.