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].