ASSESSMENT OF THE TEACHING LEVEL AT THE DEPARTMENT OF PHARMACOLOGY BY FUTURE DOCTORS: SATISFACTION OF HIGHER EDUCATION APPLICANTS WITHIN THE ACADEMIC DISCOURSE

Abstract

In the conditions of martial law and the challenges of our time, missile and drone strikes on the capital’s infrastructure, distance and mixed forms of education, emergency power outages, as well as limited transport links, traditional approaches of the educational process to the study of such a fundamental discipline as pharmacology, where scientific and pedagogical workers act as mentors, and students passively receive information, significantly complicates the implementation of the goal and formation a successful competitive graduate of an institution of higher medical education. The questionnaire itself is reliable and more objective than routine interaction and exchange of views between teachers and students, a method of receiving feedback on the real unbiased attitude of students to whether their expectations from studying a new discipline have been met, to the quality of the educational process and knowledge control. The purpose of the study was to analyze the attitude of applicants for higher medical education to pharmacology as a fundamental biomedical discipline and to assess the markers of the effectiveness of the educational and didactic process at the Department of Pharmacology based on the results of the questionnaire. In the course of the study, the authors used questionnaire methods to obtain answers from respondents, mathematical analysis to calculate survey results, and descriptive statistics to describe their characteristics. General scientific theoretical methods were also involved, such as the bibliographic method for analyzing scientific literature on the topic, methods of information synthesis (for presenting their own ideas) and generalization (for forming research conclusions). Applicants for higher education were interviewed by distributing Google forms between them from May 27 to June 4, 2025 inclusive. In total, 378 students took part in the survey, among which 324 respondents studied in the specialty 222 «Medicine» (147 representatives of the Medical Faculty No. 1, 135 applicants for higher education of the Medical Faculty No. 2 and 42 students of the Faculty of Doctors’ Training for the Armed Forces of Ukraine), 54 of the respondents were future pediatricians (Medical Faculty No. 3). 337 students (89.2%) considered their expectations during the study of pharmacology to be fully met, 36 respondents (9.5%) noted that their expectations were partially met. Among future doctors, in 287 people (88.6% in the group and 75.9% of all) expectations from the study of pharmacology were fully met, in 33 respondents (10.2% in the group and 8.7% of all) were partially met. From the data of a survey of future pediatricians, it follows that in 50 people (92.6% in the group and 13.2% of all) the expectations of studying pharmacology were fully met, in another 3 people (5.6% in the group and 0.8% of all) the expectations were partially met. According to the results of the questionnaire of students after completing the study of the discipline «Pharmacology» and conducting the final control of knowledge, important indicators of the quality of the educational process were analyzed and trends characterizing modern features of education were identified. The vast majority of applicants for higher medical education confirmed practical fullness and satisfaction with the main educational component «Pharmacology». A total of 373 respondents (98.7%) confirmed the reasonableness of their expectations from the discipline: 320 future doctors and military doctors (98.8% in the group) and 53 future pediatricians (98.2% in the group).