Creative Education
2012. Vol.3, Supplement, 80-82
Published Online December 2012 in SciRes (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/ce) DOI:10.4236/ce.2012.37B020
80
Discussion on the Teaching Methods of Pharmaceutical
Engineering Education
Nan Wang, Man Li, Xu e-Gang Luo, Tong-Cun Zhang
1Key Laboratory of Industrial Fermentation Microbiology, Ministry of Education, Tianjin, China
2Tianjin Key Laboratory of Industrial Microbiology, College of Biotechnology, Tianjin University of Science
and Technology, Tianjin, China
Received 2012
To improve the capability of the students on studying the basic knowledge and practice in pharmaceutical
engineering, we analyzed the teaching aim and characteristics of pharmacy administration. Improved me-
thods and approaches of teaching were proposed in this paper. Furthermore, we discussed how to push the
teaching innovation.
Keywords: Pharmaceutical Engineering; Pharmacy Administration; Teaching Method; Teaching
Innovation
Introduction
Pharmacy administration is a comprehensive discipline in the
pharmaceutical engineering filed, it is also a crossing edge sub-
ject generating from mutual cross effect of pharmacy, sociology,
economics, law, management and behavioral sciences ect. This
subject has wide coverage and substantial content, and it almost
involves in all fields of pharmacy and all organizations of
pharmacy administration. On one hand, the subject is a com-
pulsory course for students majored in pharmacy. On the other
hand, it is a necessary subject of the national licensed pharmac-
ist examination. Therefore, the abilities of analyzing problems
through primary theories of pharmacy should be necessary
quality for pharmacy workers, which can enable them to accu-
mulate management experience and enhance the actual work
ability.
In theory, compared with other subjects, pharmacy adminis-
tration has many terms of relevant regulations, which are boring,
dispersive, and incoherent to learn. So to improve pharmacy
administration teaching methods and teaching quality has be-
come an urgent problem needed to be solved as soon as possi-
ble. And pharmacy administration is a subject with the charac-
teristic of application and practice, so it has great significance
to explore the teaching methods that combine theory teaching
with practical application for improving education quality,
pushing forward quality education and developing students'
innovation spirit and practical capability.
The Reform and Innovation of Teaching
Methods
Pharmacy administration is a subject which largely contained
the nature of social science and its content is mainly expressed
with words. It is boring for students to learn. In order to effec-
tively inspire the initiativity, positivity and creativity of stu-
dents, to develop students’ creative spirit and practical ability,
and to strengthen the quality education, we ameliorate our
teaching methods as the following aspects.
The Heuristic Teaching Method
For the purpose of developing students’ self-learning a bility,
literature searching ability and the ability of collecting, sorting
and analyzing information, we may adopt the heuristic teaching
method, which can attract attention of students and effectively
inspire studying interest of the students. During the process of
teaching, teachers must play the leading role, and encourage
students to think actively and solve problems by themselves.
According to the characteristics of the course content, we select
relevant sections, and apply the “Question discussions” method
into teaching practice. First of all, teachers ask questions ac-
cording to the basic requirements of this chapter and encourage
students to preview with questions. Then a particular student is
specified to elaborate his opinion. Finally the teacher makes a
concluding speech. For example, when the teacher gives a les-
son about “legislation of drug administration”, he can put for-
ward some questions, such as if you're going to establish a
pharmaceutical production enterprise, how will you bid for it in
accordance with the procedures provided by law and carry out
production management lawfully, if you’re a drug supervision
administrative personnel, how will you supervise and regulate
drug-production enterprises, drug-handling enterprises and
medical establishments, etc.
The Case Teaching Methods
Pharmacy administration also is a subject which has wide
application. Combining typical cases with reality oriented ex-
planation in the teaching can make the abstract knowledge be-
come vivid tangible events from abstractness into speciality,

N. WANG ET AL.
81
from boring to interesting, and then more easy to understand.
The great advantage of the case study method is to change the
traditional teaching methods only by improving teaching mode.
The change adequately captures the enjoyment, practicalness
and application of teaching and achieves the "combination in 4
aspects" in pharmacy administration, namely “combination of
theoretical study and practice”, “combination of imparting
knowledge and cultivating ability”, “combination of the teach-
ers’ guiding role and students’ main role”, “combination of
classroom teaching and extracurricular independent learn-
ing”[3]. When teachers teach their students about the laws in-
volved in pharmacy administration, they can use the case study
method. For example, when giving a lecture about drug admin-
istration law, teachers can select typical cases, ask students to
have “group discussion”, choose a student to summarize his
team’s viewpoint, and then teachers again make out a summary
according to the student speech and list items of relevant laws.
So that everyone can learn and master laws in a relaxing and
jovial atmosphere.
The Multimedia Teaching Method
Due to the special requirements of drug production, the
number of field personnel in the production workshop restricted
strictly and before entering the workshop, people need to
change clothes cumbersomely. So the on-the-site teaching is
limite d. However , the multimedia tec hnology can elimina te the
time-space limitations of the teaching. By collecting photos and
video at the job site or summarizing the illegal cases of drugs,
successful cases of drug-production enterprise, cases of drug
administration and some other relevant content that is not de-
scribed in books to make multimedia courseware according to
the syllabus, which can enrich the class. This vivid penetrating
teaching method brings students fresh feeling, extends the stu-
dents' scope of knowledge, improves students' learning interest
and cultivates the students' observation, analysis and problem
solving ability. Besides, the use of modern multimedia teaching
technology can save time, increase the teaching information,
make teaching more intuitive and more palatable, so as to in-
crease the teaching effect and efficiency.
The Field Teaching Method
Pharmacy administration is a highly pragmatic subject. The
boring lectures often make students difficult to understand.
Through visits internship and practice will consolidate and
enhance the students’ understanding of theory, increase stu-
dents' interest in study, widen students’ vision and thinking and
cultivate students' practical ability, which will lay the solid
foundation for their work in the future. For instance, it is boring
to learn the rules of the Good Manufacturing Practices
(GMP)of drugs, if the teacher could take students to visit the
production front line and invite technicians who have certain
theoretical level and practical experience as instructors, it will
enable the students to get deeper understanding of requirements
of GMP to production management, quality management and
creation management, besides it will let students have the fur-
ther understanding of job responsibilities, work assignments,
work flows and job requirements. In this way, teachers will be
able to make the knowledge explains thoroughly, the students
can understand easily, remember firmly and know well about
pharmaceutical factory as quickly as possible, which could help
the students to quickly integrate into the new work environment
and carry out their work successfully[4]. The introduction of
the field teaching method not only increases students' percep-
tual knowledge, but also deepens the understanding of pharma-
ceutic al quality system.
The Concrete M et hods of Deepening Teaching
Innovation
To Strengthen the Teaching Material Construction of
the Pharmacy Administration
As a subject with great comprehensiveness, pharmacy ad-
ministration refers very extensive scope, the research content is
not in-depth and the teaching material is too comprehensive and
quite scattered. Therefore, it is necessary to set research key
points in the process of the subject construction to make it
gradually consummation. In addition, pharmacy administration
is intersecting science, it is highly complementary, correlated,
confluent with other subjects. Along with the development of
subjects, we should combine different research directions on
the basis of studying relevant knowledge widely for integration
and accumulation. Only in this way, we can greatly promote the
development of the subjects. Moreover, the teaching material of
pharmacy administration should keep track of the recent de-
velopment trends, absorb international advanced theory, re-
search methods of pharmacy administration and update the
subject content according to the latest national drug policy, the
latest “Methods of Medicine Registration and Management”
and drug advertising management approach, in order to make
pharmacy administration study more timely and accurate.
To Improve the Meth ods and Mea ns of T eaching
The traditional teaching mode of pharmacy administration
pays attention to theories, and makes light of practice. In order
to solve the problem, teachers should change the traditional
method of teaching by introducing the case study method and
increasing the proportion of case teaching, through which
management theory of pharmacy administration could be mas-
tered and the quality of teaching will be further improved. Al-
though, at present, the case study method has been adopted by
some college teachers, the teaching content is so obsolete that
can’t keep up with world developments in pharmacy adminis-
tration. The quality of the teaching cases is critical to the suc-
cess of the case study method, so when collecting the cases, we
must pay attention to the authenticity, typical ness, novelty, and
generality of the cases. In teaching, modern education tools will
be used to broaden information collection channels, explore and
neaten new teaching cases, then built a case base and improve
the level of the case study method utilization. In addition, the
modernization of teaching methods is one of the important
targets to achieve the aim of teaching innovation, which re-
quires teachers must keep pace with the times and make full use
of multi-media techniques and methods. But now teachers still
fail to give full play to its due role, making multimedia course-
ware and video still be much limited. In the future, great break-
throughs should be made in courseware making and the use of
network resources.

N. WANG ET AL.
82
To Teach in a Joint Teaching and Advance with the
Times
Due to pharmacy administration is a subject that has strongly
policy-natured and topicality, which requires the instructors to
read professional magazines, newspapers and update the rele-
vant policies and regulations, such as "Methods of Medicine
Registration and Management", administration regulations on
drug distribution ect, so as to present the latest and the best
teaching content for students. At the same time, pharmacy ad-
ministration is a applied and practical course, it almost involves
in all fields of pharmacy and all organizations of pharmacy
administration, therefore, teachers should go to the drug regu-
latory agencies, drug manufacturers or hospitals to study and
understand the latest development of this field. In the process of
teaching, the introduction of social investigation combines
theory with practice and deepen the students' understanding of
the social practice and knowledge [5].
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