Applying the principles of adult learning to the teaching of psychopharmacology: overview and finding the focus.

Medical education in psychopharmacology can be designed according to modern principles of adult learning. The goal is to go beyond merely exposing learners to novel content, to the documentation that learning has occurred and that behaviors have changed, namely the upgrading of skills in clinical practice. The many aspects of this approach to medical education are discussed in overview here. Future installments of "Trends in Psychopharmacology" will periodically deal with specific aspects of the best practices for medical educators outlined here only in brief. This article considers whether the focus of medical education instructors should be the medical content they present, the medical educator that does the presenting, or the learner. The perspective here is that the focus of medical education should be the learner, and that the content should be structured and executed in a manner that facilitates learning instead of inhibiting it.