Introduction

This article relates our experience in planning and implementing an educational field trip for students from the Department of Pharmacy who took PR4207 "Applied Pharmacokinetics and Toxicokinetics" in Academic Year (AY) 2007/2008. This article also examines the effectiveness of such field trips as an experiential learning tool in enhancing students' understanding of the subject.

Why Organise a Field Trip?

The pharmacist's role has changed significantly over the last decade. It has evolved from being product-centred and supply-oriented to 'clinical' roles which emphasise patient-centred cognitive services, as well as developing and regulating pharmaceutical products. Such changes pose new challenges in educating pharmacy students to ensure they have the skills to cope with the demands of their profession.

One of the biggest hurdles pharmacy students face is the ability to effectively apply their theoretical knowledge to solve workplace challenges (Shivo & Hemminki, 1999: Shivo et al., 2000; Katajavuori et al., 2002). In PR4207, students learn concepts of pharmaceutical drug development. Lecturers use case studies and applicationbased examples to help them grasp these new concepts. While this approach helps them understand how these concepts are applied in the workplace, it is confined to the classroom and students may still find the 'education-lifesociety' connection tenuous. According to Demartini (1983), incorporating experiential education into the curriculum is an effective way of making the connection clear to them, with educational field trips being good examples. We felt that a field trip to a laboratory facility would give PR4207 students first-hand knowledge of how these concepts are put into practice and boost their interest in the subject. The small size of the class (14 students in all) also made it logistically feasible to organise the trip.

Planning the Field Trip

The coordinators chose to focus on the study of preclinical in vivo pharmacokinetics (PK) during the field trip. It is a branch of biopharmaceutical science which involves measuring drug concentrations in blood and tissue over time after it has been administered to an animal specimen. This topic is covered under the early phase drug development component of PR4207.

Choosing a Suitable Site

We chose to visit GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) Department of Drug Metabolism & Pharmacokinetics (DMPK) at their N CEDD R&D Centre located at the Biopolis. GSK's DMPK facility was a suitable choice for several reasons:

• It conducts routine preclinical in vivo PK studies, which facilitates teaching the topic to students with minimal disruptions to the facility's daily operations.
  
  
• GSK has been a strong corporate supporter of Singapore's educational programmes. PR4207's module coordinator is also involved in an ongoing research collaboration with GSK and is familiar with the facility.
  
  
• The Biopolis is near the NUS campus, which makes it convenient for students to travel there and return to NUS.

Preliminary visits to the facility were made by the coordinators to discuss and confirm the locations for the lecture and laboratory demonstrations to be conducted during the field trip. Students were also thoroughly briefed before the visit to ensure they were familiar with the chosen topic.

Visiting GSK's DMPK Facility

The visit commenced with students attending a lecture delivered by Dr Edward Browne, team leader of GSK's DMPK Department. Dr Browne's lecture was designed to be consistent with PR4207's syllabus, with certain portions emphasising how preclinical in vivo PK studies are used to profile early drug candidates. After a short break, the second session got underway with a tour of the DMPK laboratory. Staff from GSK set up three stations in the laboratory where students were given demonstrations of experiments related to preclinical in vivo PK studies. Students had opportunities during both sessions to ask questions to clarify any doubts.

Evaluating the Field Trip

An evaluation form was prepared to gather students' feedback of their learning experience (see Figure 1). Students' responses to Question 1 (see Figure 2), showed that the entire class recognised that the field trip had broadened their knowledge of the topic. The results confirmed that knowledge can be enhanced as effectively during field trips as in a classroom. As for Question 2, more than 90% of the class agreed their interest in the subject increased following the field trip. This was an important finding, as increasing students' interest in the subject was one of the desired pedagogical outcomes of this visit.

Figure 1. Questions from the evaluation form for the field trip

Figure 2. Students’ responses to questions 1–5 in the evaluation form

One of the field trip's objectives was to help students bridge the gap between PR4207's theoretical concepts and its practice. We managed to do this through the laboratory demonstrations which showed them how theoretical concepts taught during lectures were applied in a workplace situation. More than 85% of the class agreed that the lecture illustrated potential applications of concepts covered in the syllabus, while the laboratory demonstrations reinforced their knowledge of these concepts (Figure 2). These results confirmed that field trips were suitable tools for short-term experiential learning.

Finally, the evaluation results also showed that most students were interested in pursuing a pharmaceutical career. While this observation is not surprising, it highlighted the fact that the subject matter was relevant to their learning needs. It also partially explained students' positive response to this experiential learning experience. In fact, some gave good suggestions for future field trips, such as making visits to other pharmaceutical facilities and including a drug development case study for subsequent lectures.

Conclusion

It is evident that a meticulously planned educational field trip can lead to a rewarding experiential learning experience for both students and lecturer. These visits give them the opportunity to see how concepts learnt in the classroom are applied in workplace situations. Such learning experiences also enable students to develop a deeper interest in the subject and ultimately enhance their metacognitive as well as lifelong learning skills to become more effective healthcare professionals.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Ms Aveline Neo, Ms Catherine Goh and Ms Jean Lim of the Department of DMPK, GlaxoSmithKline N CEDD Cognition & Neurodegeneration Centre, for their kind assistance during the laboratory demonstrations.

References

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