PHCL 503 (Advanced Therapeutics-3)

Course Description:
PHCL 503 exposes students to the pathophysiology and clinical management of Critical Care and Neuropsychiatric disorders. This course emphasizes pathophysiology, self-care, patient education, assessment, medication administration, management, and monitoring, as well as preventative health and population-based health outcomes. 

Course Goals:
To develop skills that will enable the student to:

1. Correlate pathophysiologic changes to the clinical manifestations of a given disease process and predict treatment strategies that might be effective for management of a given disease
2. Build the knowledge base and skills needed to design a rational therapeutic regimen
3. Design, implement, monitor, evaluate, and modify patient specific therapeutic regimens in accordance with established, evidence based standards of practice
4. Identify, assess, prevent and/or resolve disease and drug therapy problems
5. Think critically and develop clinical judgment as to the continuing effectiveness of population based and individualized therapeutic plans and intended therapeutic outcomes
6. Retrieve, evaluate, and manage professional information and literature

Course Objectives:
At the completion of course series, the student should be able to:

1. Describe and correlate signs and symptoms, epidemiology, risk factors, pathogenesis, natural history of disease, pathophysiology, clinical course, etiology, and prevention and treatment of the common critical care and neuropsychiatric disorders
2. Identify evidence based, patient specific therapeutic goals and outcome measures for a patient started on a drug therapy regimen
3. Apply evidenced based medicine to compare and contrast therapeutic options for a given medical problem and/or disease state in terms of efficacy, clinical evidence, toxicity, ease of administration, cost, and patient specific factors
4. Design and defend a patient-specific therapeutic regimen which is safe, efficacious and practical for each drug selected, including dose, pharmacokinetic and pharmacogenetic principles, route, frequency and time of administration
5. Evaluate the appropriateness of patient specific drug therapy regimen and treatment plans
6. Monitor expected therapeutic outcomes and potential adverse effects of drug therapy
7. Develop an alternative drug therapy regimen based on clinical, psychosocial, and economic considerations when appropriate
8. Use problem solving skills and knowledge to solve therapeutic cases

Learning Resources:
 The textbook required for this course are:

1. Pharmacotherapy A Pathophysiologic Approach 9th edition by Joseph DiPiro, Robert L. Talbert, Gary Yee, Gary Matzke, Barbara Wells, L. Michael Posey.
2. Clinical practice guidelines (when available), primary literature, and review articles related to clinical discussions for critical appraisal.