Improvement of the learning effectiveness of pharmacology role-play by introducing P-drug reports

Abstract

Pharmacology role-play works well for students playing the role of the medical doctor or patient, but students without any roles behave just like observers, resulting in a relatively low learning effectiveness. To improve this issue, a personal drug (P-drug) report was introduced to the role-play program. To examine to what extent the P-drug report affected the learning effectiveness of role-play, we performed questionnaire surveys for players and audiences and subsequent nominal logistic regression analysis. The questionnaire topics were (1) understanding of medical treatment, (2) understanding patient’s feelings, (3) improvement of awareness and motivation as a medical doctor, and (4) positive influence upon study attitude. In the topics (1) and (2), the statistical analyses in audiences showed significant relationship between the introduction of the report and observer’s recognition of the learning effectiveness, indicating the improvement of learning effectiveness after the introduction of the P-drug report. In players, the percentage of high marks was higher than that in audiences, and no significant differences were found between before and after the introduction of the report. In addition, in the free description, many students realized the importance of selection of therapeutic drugs based on P-drug methods. These results suggest that the introduction of the P-drug report seems useful to make all students participate in the activity of role-play with understanding the selection process of therapeutic drugs, and improves the learning effectiveness of role-play especially in observers. It may be useful to combine P-drug with pharmacology role-play in practical pharmacotherapy education.