Pharmacology Class

Article by: Amber Palmer, M&M TIPster

“Okay, you need to press it to your finger firmly, and then just click it. It might hurt, but that’s okay.” This is what we hear as we walk into the Pharmacology class of Duke TIP. “That didn’t hurt. I was expecting, ‘hey, there’s a needle stabbing into my skin, it hurts,’ but no.” After a few moments of intense concentration, there is a triumphant call of, “115!” The students are doing a hands-on experiment during their evening study session after learning about Diabetes and its effects on the body. They are taking their own blood glucose levels to see into a little bit of the daily lives of diabetics. “It’s an important skill to have,” their TA Jen says of testing the blood sugar. “You may have the disease some day, or you might have to help somebody who has it, and then you’ll have some experience with it. It’s good to know if a drug is working, and you won’t know unless you test it.”

Only half the class was there, since the other half was working on independent projects for part of the hour. There are fourteen students total in the Pharmacology class, and they all seem to love it. “It’s a great class!” exclaims AnnaMarie Koehler-Shepley, one of the students. “We do a lot of hands-on things, and [the class] gives us a lot of real life application.” The only real downside is having three different classrooms to learn in, and switch class throughout the day.

The average day for Pharmacology students starts with a “lecture” on the background information concerning what they will be learning throughout the day. Then, they have a short break and it’s back to learning, this time from a video. After lunch, they will usually have a lab coinciding with the things they learned earlier in the day. They finish up with reading articles until the end of class. When they aren’t stabbing themselves with needles, evening study can include anything from playing games to reading. “We study a lot about the systems that drugs interact with, and recently we’ve been learning about the physiological effects on the body,” says AnnaMarie.

Katie Seaman, one of the fourteen students, says her favorite part about the class is, “doing experiments. Definitely.” These experiments sometimes include dissecting pregnant rats and their babies. During this lab, the students were learning about the organs involved in metabolizing, and one of the rats had babies which were cut open as well.

Pharmacology students learn about nearly everything medical; any drug, any medicine, any disease. This includes one student’s favorite subject to learn about: abuse drugs. These are the addictive drugs that countless people get involved with. AnnaMarie explains, “It’s a widespread issue, and it affects so many people. They get hooked from just trying it, and it’s cool to know how it works so we won’t [get hooked].” Pharmacology is a great class, and all the students love it.