Implementation of an Integrated Pharmacology Curriculum in a Flipped, Small‐Group, Case‐Based, Pre‐Clerkship Medical Curriculum Improved Student Performance

Rush Medical College implemented a new, integrated pre-clerkship curriculum. Pharmacology was integrated with other basic sciences into a flipped, small-group, case-based structure. This report describes the main features of the pharmacology curriculum for pharmacology directors to have a template. When pharmacology assessment items were compared from before and after the curriculum change, both the degree of difficulty and the point biserial correlation increased for the items created during the new curriculum. Furthermore, student satisfaction, as reported by the Graduate Questionnaire (GQ), steadily increased. Therefore, student performance and perception of pharmacology content were positively affected by the integrated curriculum. This paper describes a framework for directors of pharmacology to use for integration of novel curricular strategies and provides examples of how to achieve successful integration.