IUPHAR-Ed Core Concepts in Pharmacology (CCP) initiative.
Inspired by core concepts development in other disciplines, the pharmacology education community embarked on a project aimed at helping students master the most important concepts of pharmacology. In 2020, educators from Australia and New Zealand identified 20 core concepts of pharmacology education [39], which they then defined and unpacked [40]. The methodology and outcomes developed from this initial project provided a proof-of-principle that core concepts could be identified in pharmacology.
This work generated a conversation within the international pharmacology education community, including a session at the 2019 British Pharmacological Society meeting in Edinburgh. A seminal workshop amidst the pandemic in July 2021 set out some key objectives of the project:
This international project aims to transform pharmacology education by developing core concepts, a concept inventory, and education resources, to support students and educators in attaining the foundational principles of pharmacology.
The workshop also tasked the first of many expert groups with a Delphi study to identify “foundational pharmacology core concepts that all students who have taken a pharmacology course should understand and apply”.
To generate outcomes relevant across the global community, an international Core Concepts of Pharmacology (CCP) project was formally established in late 2021 under the banner of the IUPHAR-Ed (coreconceptspharmacology.org). The IUPHAR-Ed CCP project is ambitious, inclusive, and expansive. To date, over 300 educators from 23 countries across six continents have contributed. A research team consisting of 10-15 expert educators was established to design and oversee the project, and a series of expert groups were recruited to provide input at each stage of the project. The project design consists of four major outcomes; Core Concepts Development; Concept Inventory Development; Concept Inventory Validation; and Education Resource Development, each with sub-elements, as shown in Figure 1.