emel dr Dr. Asrul

Ni emel dari Dr. Asrul

I would usually refrain myself from commenting individual case but I did give some exceptions especially to ‘distance’ learners like yourself who don’t have the benefit of one-to-one consultation with me. Furthermore, I believed that this small piece of comment/advice might apply to your colleagues as well.

There are two tips that I would share with you:

1. Give Explanation & Example for Your Answer

My exam’s questions are quite straightforward. However, rather than having the students simply restating the point as in lecture notes (‘memorize completely word by word’), I do expect more explanation for each of them. My answer scheme is quite simple. I would give point for each correct answer point. However, there is a maximum point for just stating them. Additional points are gained from brief explanation and example for these answer point.

2.Answer the Question Correctly as Asked.

– Understand the question and answer them as requested. I cannot give marks to any point that did not answer my question.

– Question that ask reason is asking you to state the basis of the action. If the question is asking you ‘what is the reason for earthquake?’, the answer should be ‘because of the movement of earth plate’ and not ‘to drop the pressure on our earth plate’. Your answers toward my question ‘Discuss the reasons for monitoring drug utilization’ only state the objectives of drug utilization monitoring e.g. ‘to ensure there is no wastage ...’ etc. The reason should be in the vein of the very problems that we have in practice that necessitates us (or be the very reasons) to monitor drug utilization. We have in fact discussed this in our class whereby we discussed the problems e.g. excessive prescribing by the physician, and their failure to define therapeutic endpoints for drug use are some of the problems/reasons for us monitoring drug utilization.

– The same goes for question that ask about characteristics. You have to describe the characteristics to that object. ANY distribution can has variance, standard deviation, mean, median and mode. BUT, normal distribution has mean that equals its median and mode.

In general, student should demonstrate reasonable cognitive understanding towards the concepts asked in the exam question. This would be reflected by the student’s ability to give and explain correct answer to the exam question. A lower level learning is just merely restating the fact or what we infamously called ‘vomiting the lessons’.

Feel free to share this tips with your friends as I might not be able to entertain any email on one-to-one basis like this again. Best wishes,

Asrul Akmal Shafie
BPharm (Hons), Pg Dip Health Economics, PhD (Cardiff)
Discipline of Social & Administrative Pharmacy
School of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Universiti Sains Malaysia
11800 Penang, MALAYSIA
Fax: +604 657 0017
Tel (O): +604 653 4726