MEDSCI 722 course details
Teaching staff
General questions regarding this course should be directed to the course coordinator
Prof Nick Holford
Professor
Pharmacology & Clinical Pharmacology
Room: 503-229
Phone: +64 9 373 7599 ext 86730
Email: n.holford@auckland.ac.nz
Course materials
Course materials are provided electronically via this website. To allow flexible learning, lecture notes have been converted to HTML and are available for reading and printing by clicking on the link to the required lecture within the Timetable Page. This should be fine for most users and should allow you to read and print the lecture notes if required.
Department seminars
Students are encouraged to attend the Department Research seminars which are held once a month on Fridays 3.00 - 4.00 pm in room 3205.
Assessment
Assessment will consist of course work (25%) and a final exam (75%).
- 25% Coursework (essay - Critical Review of A New Zealand Medicine Data Sheet)
- 75% Final Exam (3 hours)
Coursework
One essay (maximum 5000 words excluding references) should be submitted by 5pm Friday 30th September 2011.
The topic of the essay will be a critical review of a New Zealand medicine data sheet as found on the MedSafe website or in the New Ethicals Compendium. The essay should discuss the overall scope and content of the data sheet. It must also include a specific focus on the application of the target concentration approach to dose individualization and recommendations for improving the information given to clinicians and patients.
Please note that this is NOT an essay about a specific drug. You are asked for a critical review of the contents of a data sheet. This will involve reviewing the clinical pharmacology of the drug in order to write an informed critical discussion of the data sheet. The critical review should identify positive and negative features of the data sheet as well as suggestions for improving the information (which may mean proposing additional material to add to the data sheet). The critical review must be fully referenced to the original literature whenever appropriate in the format used by this journal:
The bibliography should include books, journals and papers which you used in your essay.
The critical review must be in your own words, type-written or printed. Do not copy word-for-word from other authors' work. Put it into your own words and acknowledge the source. If you use figures from books etc, acknowledge the source.
Students will be asked to deliver a short presentation on their essay topic in one of the course sessions. The talk should focus on what was the most interesting thing discovered in the critical review of the datasheet.
In addition to submitting your coursework review on paper you are required to submit your review in electronic form to Turnitin. The University of Auckland use Turnitin to automatically check the content for evidence of plagiarism. You will need to register with Turnitin (through this web page). This involves supplying an email address and your personal Turnitin password.
You must then enroll in the MEDSCI 722 class using the following details:
Turnitin Class ID: 4134653
Password: drugs
Plagiarism or failure to acknowledge quotes and sources of information is cheating.
When plagiarism is discovered no marks will be given and the incident will be reported to the University Education Committee.
The critical review is worth 25% of total marks for this paper (20% for written component, 5% for oral presentation).
Final exam
This will be conducted by the University in the examination period and will be of 3 hours duration. It will cover all material from the lectures and tutorials and relevant Division seminars. Exam questions will assume familiarity with basic concepts of pharmacology as described on the MEDSCI 722 front page.
Examinations from previous years are available from the ExamBase. Note the course code for MEDSCI 722 was previously PHARMCOL 722.
Pre-examination tips
- Check your examination timetable. It is published on Student Services Online near the mid-semester break. You should keep checking regularly, as dates may change. You should receive an official timetable in the mail two weeks before the examinations start. Always check the actual examination timetable posted to you - do not rely on someone verbally telling you.
- Please read the examination instructions carefully as all information about the examinations and the regulations are written there. You will receive these in the post with your timetable.
- Morning examinations always start at 9.15 am and afternoon examinations at 2.15 pm unless you are sitting an examination under special conditions.
- All valuables should be left at home, including mobile phones, as the University cannot take responsibility for these. It is a breach of the examination regulations to have a mobile phone at your desk or on your person.
- You must sit the examination at the campus which appears on your timetable.
Recommended reading
Most of the reading that you should be doing for this paper should be of recent papers and reviews. However useful background reading may be found in:
- Avery's Drug Treatment, 4th edition, Eds. Speight & Holford (Adis International), 1997
- Clinical Pharmacokinetics. Concepts and Applications, 3rd Edition, Eds., Rowland & Tozer. (Lea & Febinger), 1995
- Basic and Clinical Pharmacology, 11th Edn. Ed. B. Katzung. (Lange Medical Books/McGraw Hill), 2009
- Principles of Clinical Pharmacology, 2nd Edn. Ed. A. Atkinson et al. (Academic Press), 2007
You must also be able to use the Philson library's Medline Search Service and Current Contents. Tutorials for using these services can booked online at Library Course Bookings
Cecil
Course details are also maintained on Cecil. Please make sure you are able to log on to Cecil. Class announcements will be made on the Cecil notice board.