Effect of pre-practical training about “therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM)” for pharmacy students to improve clinical awareness

Abstract

Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) based on the pharmacokinetics of a patient is a specialized area in pharmaceutical sciences. TDM education is a part of the pre-practical training, which is outlined in the revised model core curriculum of outcome-based pharmaceutical education. The content of the training conducted by each pharmacy school varies greatly because it is not defined clearly. Therefore, we created a pre-practical training program on TDM at Ritsumeikan University. In our training, there are case studies on TDM practice for a hospital setting and a community pharmacy setting. A case study for a community pharmacy, for example, focused on medical instruction about dosing times for an anti-influenza virus drug. The pharmacy students discussed an optimal dosing time of oseltamivir using the pharmacokinetics information. They may not have encountered this concept before, of providing medication instruction based on the pharmacokinetic estimation. We investigated the need for TDM training with a student questionnaire. The questionnaire revealed a high level of understanding (78%) of the TDM case studies. Therefore, these case studies could be useful and highly interesting for the students. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated the relevance of pre-practical TDM training based on examples of clinical practice.