Educational effects of learning through simulation of diabetes drug therapy

Abstract

One of the Specific Behavioral Objectives (SBOs) of pharmaceutical education model-core curriculum is as follows: "Understand patient's state of mind and be sensitive to patient's feelings". We performed learning through simulation of diabetes drug therapy as a means to achieve the objective and evaluated the educational effects of the learning. The simulation was performed and a questionnaire survey was conducted among the 4th-year students of the 6-year curriculum before and after simulation. The score of "level of understanding patient's feelings" was significantly increased after simulation (p<0.001). In addition, the score tended to be associated (R 2=0.192) with an increased score in two factors that affect patients' self-care action: "Consciousness of diabetes mellitus" (β=0.251, p=0.062) and "Time and effort for drug therapy" (β=0.248, p=0.065). The main topics of discussion about the simulation included "Lack of sense of critical illness", "Lifestyle", "Dose regimen" and "Necessity of support from patients' family and others close to them". Therefore, the learning through simulation diabetes drug therapy was effective to understand patients' states of mind because students learned the importance of some factors affecting self-care action. © 2011 The Pharmaceutical Society of Japan.