Foundations for Future Health Care Providers: Pharmacology

Have you always dreamed about being a doctor? Maybe you find the way the body works really fascinating or you feel compelled to help others.

Well, we’ve got a series for you! Take a look at the new series, Foundations for Future Health Care Providers.

Medical school can be tough, but you can get ahead of the curve with these programs designed to teach you the fundamental concepts of medicine.

UCSD-TV gives you a sneak peek of your first year at medical school with these videos from faculty at UCSF. Learn the basics of Anatomy, Physiology, and Pathology in the Foundations for Future Health Care Providers series.

Check out this program from the series all about pharmacology.

Antibiotics are a common type of prescription drug used to combat bacterial infections in the body. However, the effectiveness of these drugs is diminishing as more and more of these infectious bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics.

In “Pharmacology: Bugs and Drugs, Part 1,” Marieke Kruidering Hall, Associate Professor in the Department of Cellular & Molecular Pharmacology at UCSF, explains that this can be related to incidents when people are prescribed antibiotics, but don’t finish taking all of the prescribed drug.

People will feel better and think they don’t need to keep taking the antibiotic. Although the symptoms of the infection are gone, some bacteria remain and by not completing that antibiotic, people allow those remaining bacteria to survive the antibiotic. Those remaining bacteria multiply, therefore creating a strain of bacteria that is able to survive the treatment of antibiotics.

See what else Kruidering Hall has to say about the way antiviral, antimicrobial, and antifungal drugs work differently within the body, in “Pharmacology: Bugs and Drugs, Part 1.”

Explore other videos in the Foundations for Future Health Care Providers series!

Oncology from Top to Bottom

If you are looking to work in the medical field, cancer is something you will be forced to face on a regular basis — especially considering that the incidences of cancer are rising, and currently the likelihood of contracting cancer in your lifetime is 1 in 2.

The latest video from the Foundations for Future Healthcare Providers series takes a look at oncology, specifically cancers within the gastrointestinal tract.

Dr. Andrew Ko, from the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center, specializes in gastrointestinal cancers and says that there are many different types, just about as many different types of gastrointestinal cancers as there are different gastrointestinal organs. The most dangerous and most prevalent of these gastrointestinal cancers is colorectal cancer, which is ranked #3 in incidence and in cancer-related mortality amongst all cancers in general.

Find out more about just how different and deadly these types of cancers are in “Oncology from Top to Bottom: A Survey of Cancers through the Gastrointestinal Tract

See what else you can learn from the Foundations for Future Healthcare Providers series!