Survey results of POPS use in United States and Canadian schools of medicine and pharmacy

Recent initiatives calling for changes in medical education, such as the General Professional Education of the Physician and Robert Wood Johnson Reports, have recommended alternative teaching approaches to the lecture format. The Patient-Oriented Problem-Solving (POPS) exercises, sponsored by the Upjohn Company (Kalamazoo, MI) and made available for pharmacology in 1985, offer one of many possible alternatives to lectures. The technique involves group interactions between four students in a working group, each of whom must, with the aid of their colleagues, arrive at mutual solutions to simulated cases in clinical pharmacology. The exercises are intended to complement and enhance the learning of concepts from lectures, and to help students apply these concepts practically. The system is used extensively by medical, pharmacy, and other health profession schools throughout the United States and also abroad, and many thousands of exercise booklets have been distributed free of charge by the Upjohn Company. Currently, a committee of the American Medical School Pharmacology (AMSP) group, working with Upjohn Company personnel, is responsible for overseeing the writing and educational testing of new and revised exercises. The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a survey of POPS use in medical and pharmacy schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, completed in March 1993. The returns indicate continued strong interest in the approach, and the acquired data affirm its value in teaching principles of clinical pharmacology to students in basic pharmacology courses. Detailed data were obtained on patterns of use, and a number of advantages and disadvantages were identified. Priorities for the writing of new POPS exercises were expressed by the respondents. The information acquired will form the basis for planning new and revised POPS exercises in the future.
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