By introducing the CP4T program, including the updated guides and the multimodule course, we aimed to harmonize and modernize the teaching and training of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (CPT) across Europe and beyond. The project sought to educate and support CPT teachers through updated teaching materials that reflect the latest educational insights, offer an aligned CPT curriculum that also takes into account the needs of students with disabilities, and provide a comprehensive assessment program covering both traditional and emerging topics. Furthermore, the program aimed to foster collaboration between European universities through international and interprofessional student-run clinics, facilitating teacher and student exchange opportunities. After the project, the complete “teach-the-teacher” package—including the training activities, aligned CPT curriculum, comprehensive assessment program, and international collaboration framework—will be freely available to all medical universities worldwide.
For our Erasmus+ application, we aimed to address the critical need for modernized, harmonized education in medication prescribing. This need was highlighted by the WHO, with its goal to reduce avoidable medication-related harm by 50% [Donaldson, 2017], the European Commission, and the European Association for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics [Brinkman et al. 2018]. The existing 30-years-old ‘WHO Guide to Good Prescribing’ and its related Teacher’s Guide including materials were outdated and no longer met current standards [Tichelaar, 2019]. As a result, prescribers were not fully equipped to address contemporary challenges like polypharmacy, deprescribing, race-based medicine, gender, and electronic prescribing. Our group aimed to bridge this gap by creating the CP4T program to modernize CPT education . Through updating the guidelines, offering a multimodal (online) teach the teacher course, and developing supplementary training materials (tutorials, case repositories, videos), we sought to provide future healthcare professionals with the most up-to-date, evidence-based education. This project eventually improves CPT education, and thereby improving medication safety and patient care.