Critical thinking and reflection exercises in a biochemistry course to improve prospective health professions students' attitudes toward physician-pharmacist collaboration.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the impact of performing critical-thinking and reflection assignments within interdisciplinary learning teams in a biochemistry course on pharmacy students' and prospective health professions students' collaboration scores. DESIGN: Pharmacy students and prospective medical, dental, and other health professions students enrolled in a sequence of 2 required biochemistry courses. They were randomly assigned to interdisciplinary learning teams in which they were required to complete case assignments, thinking and reflection exercises, and a team service-learning project. ASSESSMENT: Students were asked to complete the Scale of Attitudes Toward Physician-Pharmacist Collaboration prior to the first course, following the first course, and following the second course. The physician-pharmacist collaboration scores of prospective health professions students increased significantly (p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Having prospective health professions students work in teams with pharmacy students to think and reflect in and outside the classroom improves their attitudes toward physician-pharmacist collaboration.

Interprofessional workshop to improve mutual understanding between pharmacy and medical students.

OBJECTIVE: To measure changes in pharmacy and medical students' physician-pharmacist collaboration scores resulting from a workshop designed to promote understanding of the others' roles in health care. METHODS: More than 88% of first-year pharmacy (n = 215) and medical (n = 205) students completed the Scale of Attitudes Toward Physician-Pharmacist Collaboration on 3 occasions in order to establish a baseline of median scores and to determine whether the scores were influenced by an interprofessional workshop. RESULTS: Participation in the interprofessional workshop increased pharmacy students' collaboration scores above baseline (p=0.02) and raised the scores of medical students on the education component of the collaboration survey instrument (p=0.015). The collaboration scores of pharmacy students greatly exceeded those of medical students (p<0.0001). CONCLUSION: A workshop designed to foster interprofessional understanding between pharmacy and medical students raised the physician-pharmacist collaboration scores of both. Crucial practical goals for the future include raising the collaboration scores of medical students to those of pharmacy students.

Effect of androgens and glucocorticoids on microbial growth and antimicrobial susceptibility.

The effects of androgens, testosterone and dihydrotestosterone (DHT), of an environmental anti-androgen, 2,2-bis(4-chlorophenyl)-1,1-dichloroethylene (DDE), and of glucocorticoids, hydrocortisone and dexamethasone, on growth kinetics and antibiotic susceptibility of E. faecalis, E. coli, P. aeurginosa, and S. aureus were measured. For P. aeurginosa, the presence of either DHT or DDE caused at least a fourfold shift in the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of cefepime and tobramycin. DHT and DDE also affected the response of E. faecalis to meropenem and norfloxacin, resulting in a shift from sensitive to intermediate resistance (four-fold increase in MIC). Hydrocortisone (2 microM) induced an increase in the sensitivity of S. aureus to erythromycin, as compared to hormone-free control (from 0.5 to 0.06 microg/mL). The susceptibility pattern of E. coli was unaffected by the hormones tested. These changes in susceptibility to antibiotics were unrelated to alterations in growth kinetics. For all organisms tested, the alterations in MICs occurred only in the presence of hormone, indicative of changes in the phenotype of these stable quality control strains.