Clinical Pharmacology
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Briefing
Clinical Pharmacology is a pass/fail course lasting over two years. Each year has lectures and classes, which look like seminars. At the end of both years, there is a MCQ test to give you the credit.
Most of the course will be held in different departments all over campus, and mostly in seminar form or "interactive" case discussion. In 5th year, you will also do simulations in the Simulation Center.
4th Year
Lectures were held online. No attendance. Sometimes, they didn't happen, sometimes delayed.
Classes were held in different seminar rooms all over the hospital, always in the afternoon and usually after other classes. Expect one to three of them each week over the span of a couple weeks.
The classes themselves were questionable in their didactic approach. The assistants split the room into groups and gave them cases with questions to work trough. After a timer, some groups (because there was not enough time to hear all groups) had to present their answers - while the others were supposed to listen.
The credit is supposed to be about the things and cases discussed in class, you also may get guidelines to read through, however, ultimately, nobody from our year could exactly tell what the credit was based on. We would advice reading through a lot of treatment plans for the diseases discussed. Your assistants may tell you which diseases are more likely to appear on the credit (eg Diabetes, Asthma, COPD, etc). What we didn't particularly like were the few questions about drug interactions.
The credit was 3 cases with 5 MCQ questions under each, and 5 questions about the lectures. The questions, sometimes, were connected to each other.
5th Year
In 5th year, the course was pretty much the same as in 4th year, but with different assistants and two classes at the Sim Center.
The lectures were all online and the slides were provided. The class material was shared after some time with the class rep.
Most of the classes were held in seminar form. The Sim Center classes were practical and not too difficult.
With the credit, we encountered the same issue as last year when it comes to not knowing what to prepare. It was less severe though, and all but 3 students passed on the first try. Though, many did so with not many points above threshold and a lot of confusion afterwards. Overall though, and from what the years above us said: Clinical Pharma in 5th year is more passable than in 4th year.
Attendance
Assessment
Credit Test 4th Year
The credit consisted of 20 MCQ's. We got 30 minutes to write the credit, 60% (12/20 points) were required to pass.
We (23/24) considered the credit to be hard, as we had issues preparing for it and didn't exactly know what was effective to prepare. In our case, however, 75% passed the first take. The second take was difficult as well (because they mixed up old questions) and a few people had to take the third attempt.
It is worth noting that they base their question off of local guidelines (i.e. Antibiotics resistance patters, etc). For some questions, we really needed to know such details.
Exemption
There is no exemption possible.Credit Test 5th Year
The credit consisted of 20 MCQ's. We got 20 minutes to write the credit. 60% (12/20 points) were required to pass. The answers had to be registered by writing capital letters in boxes below the questions.
We (23/24) would consider the 5th year credit difficult as well, as the materials given were only partially sufficient to answer their multiple choice questions – thus leaving us perplexed at what we can really recommend. The instructions "just study our materials" are not true, as deeper pharmacological knowledge was needed.
Exemption
There is no exemption possible.Credit
This subject will appear as "credit" in your transcript, meaning you just have to pass the credit test and don't worry about a grade entering your transcript.
This page is edited by
Julius Clauberg
Class of 2026Matthias Koch
Class of 2025