Perception of medical students about pharmacology and scope of improvement

Pharmacology is a subject taught in the medical curriculum in India over a period of one and half years along with pathology, microbiology and forensic medicine. The present study was planned to know the opinion of medical students regarding pharmacology and to assess the proposed teaching schedule and methods of teaching pharmacology. The study was conducted in a private medical college in eastern India among the medical undergraduate students in 5th semester. Total 74 students participated in the study. A pre-designed, pre-tested, semi-structured questionnaire was given to the students and data was collected after one hour. Collected data was compiled, tabulated and analyzed in SPSS (version 16.0). The subject was perceived as interesting and useful by majority of students and most of them were in opinion to integrate pharmacology with the clinical subjects. Lecture in whole class was the most preferred teaching method according to the students and teaching with chalk and board they preferred most. Rational use of medicine, clinical trial, pediatric and geriatric pharmacology are the important topics the students felt to be included in the curriculum. Regular assessment of teaching methods by the students and taking suggestions from the students about improving the teaching method and redesigning the curriculum can help a lot in improving the learning capacity of the medical students and that will give benefit for the society as a whole.