Outcome 1. Core Concept Development (completed).
The first outcome, completed in 2022, was the identification of the core concepts that all students should remember and apply. To achieve this outcome, a research team designed and completed a study involving multiple sources of information and a wide range of expert opinions. The exploratory phase involved empirical data mining of the introductory sections of five key textbooks in parallel with an online survey of over 200 pharmacology educators from 17 countries across six continents, which resulted in a consolidated list of 74 candidate core concepts. The refinement phase involved three rounds of Delphi analysis involving 24 experts from 15 countries. Using five inclusion criteria, these experts produced a consensus list of 25 international core concepts of pharmacology education [41].
Next, the research team designed a Delphi process to produce definitions and unpack core concepts of the discipline [42]. In this study, 60 international pharmacology education experts worked in small groups to draft definitions for the core concepts and identify key sub-concepts via a series of online meetings and asynchronous work. These were refined in the second phase through a two-day hybrid workshop followed by an additional series of online meetings and asynchronous work. As part of the hybrid workshop, participants generated a set of concept maps to demonstrate the interconnectedness of the core concepts, which were then refined into a single overarching map (Figure 2) [43].