Educational effect of pharmacogenomics (PGx) practice in therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) exercise in pre-practical training

Abstract

Pharmacogenomics (PGx) is a valuable tool for facilitating precision medicine approaches to pharmacotherapy and is emphasized in the revised model of the core curriculum. However, pharmacy students are educated on PGx mainly through classroom lectures, with few attempts to implement it in nationwide pre-clinical training. The educational impact of PGx training was investigated with fourth-year pharmacy students at Ritsumeikan University. Questionnaires were conducted before and after the therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) training to investigate the effect of the PGx training program on student comprehension. The results showed that the training improved understanding of the term PGx (P < 0.01). Furthermore, the number of correct answers to prescription drug design questions based on gene polymorphism significantly increased following the training (P < 0.01). Awareness of the importance of proposing drug therapy based on gene polymorphisms also significantly increased (P < 0.01), supporting the usefulness of the PGx training program during pre-clinical training.