Pharmacology Course for Health Care Professionals
The primary goal of this course is to teach basic pharmacology that will allow the healthcare professional to provide patient care in the modern integrated healthcare environment. The student will be introduced to basic pharmacology with an emphasis on how drugs act in humans in ways that relate to nursing, physical therapy, and other healthcare professions. This is accomplished in part through utilization of the nursing process: assessment, intervention and evaluation. The nursing student will learn to use knowledge of pharmacology along with other information in the nursing clinical reasoning process (assessment, diagnosis, planning/outcome criteria, implementation, evaluation of outcome). The physical therapy students will learn to use the knowledge in the clinical reasoning model used in physical therapy patient/client management (examination, evaluation, diagnosis [PT diagnosis], prognosis [including plan of care] and Intervention).
To achieve this overall goal, the following topics are presented:
- General principles of pharmacology: drug-receptor concepts, biological responses, factors altering drug actions, and pharmacokinetics (the effects of body functions on drugs), i.e., the factors involved in the absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion of drugs.
- Systems pharmacology: actions on selected biochemical pathways and physiological systems and functions of the body, including the central and autonomic nervous systems, the cardiovascular, renal, respiratory and gastrointestinal system, endocrine and immune systems, and musculoskeletal system.
- Chemotherapy: a survey of major anti‑infective and anti-neoplastic agents.
- Brief descriptions of the major illnesses commonly treated by pharmacological therapy.
- Drugs of abuse (psychoactive drugs and anabolic steroids).
For more information contact:
Nancy Meier, RN
University of Nebraska Medical Center
Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience
College of Nursing
Omaha, Nebraska 68198
E-mail: nmeier@unmc.edu
