PharmSim is an educational pharmacology simulation focusing on the use of antibiotics to treat selected infections. The goals of the project include helping nurses to understand the implications of missing prescribed doses, giving medication late, and giving improper amounts of a prescribed drug. The simulation, however, has been designed to allow for experimentation and discovery of a large variety of pharmacodynamic principles.
Learners can see how variations in patients (e.g. age, body weight, and kidney function) affect the concentration of a given drug in the bloodstream over time. They can create their own dosing schedules, select drugs and routes and alter the "compliance" of the drug administrator. PharmSim also models the growth (and death) of bacteria to show whether a given drug regimen was effective.
This project is a collaboration with the USC Laboratory of Applied Pharmacokinetics. It is currently in alpha testing and will be beta tested in selected classrooms in late fall 2003. General release is scheduled for spring 2004.
