Teaching pharmacology by case study

This paper describes why case studies deserve a place in the centre of the bioscience curriculum, and how they have been used as a vehicle to improve care and save lives. A knowledge of drugs, their side-effects and interactions is becoming increasingly important to nurses. One powerful way to convey this information is the case study, which, despite its limitations, has the potential to endow difficult topics in therapeutics with the power of the narrative. The author suggests that case study projects encourage students to forge theory-practice links, related to their own specialist areas. When shared with their colleagues, these encourage the class by illustrating ‘bioscience in action’ and endowing the subject with the ‘reality factor’. They also provide rich qualitative data for evaluating and delineating the curriculum. These case studies demonstrate the value of evidence-based practice; although case data is part of the evidence, it can never substitute for evidence-based practice. This paper builds on the findings of the authorʹs PhD in postregistration nurse education; the examples described here are typical of 15 I such cases in the research project.