Teaching What Matters: Lessons From a Pharmacist Educating Physician Assistant Students

Physician assistant (PA) students enter training with substantial health care experience but often have limited formal pharmacology exposure. They must develop a working knowledge of pharmacology in far less time than pharmacy students while simultaneously learning the many other disciplines required during PA training.My approach is to first build a common pharmacology foundation, then teach medication class patterns before exceptions and connect drug mechanisms to physiology and pathophysiology. High-yield information is reinforced through consistent slide organization, visual cues, repetition, retrieval questions, and end-of-lecture review. Case-based questions are then used to move students from basic recall to clinical decision making. The goal is not to teach everything a pharmacist knows, but to help students systematically recognize, retain, and apply the information most likely to influence patient care.Effective PA pharmacology education requires deliberate prioritization and reinforcement. Pharmacists should adapt their expertise to help students progress from foundational knowledge to safe, clinically sound prescribing.