Learning outcomes

The course introduces the student to the basic concepts of major diseases and the fundamental pathogenetic processes, allowing them to correlate cellular homeostatic mechanisms to alterations of the organ functions and clinical manifestations of disease. Students will understand the basic principles of pharmacology, especially in pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic mechanisms, and the benefit and risk profile of the drugs. The course will helps students to develop an approach oriented to prevention, assessment and management of respiratory, urinary and intestinal function alteration and the multidimensional assessment of pain. PHARMACOLOGY: The course aims to provide general knowledge about the functions and the use of drug therapy, in the fields of pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics, pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacovigilance. Concepts of pharmacology are essential to the development of the nurse's own skills in management and control of drug therapies, as well in patient education. This course is preparatory to the study of the individual classes of drugs, which starts with anti-inflammatory and antibacterial drugs and will be completed in the clinical pharmacology module. SEMEIOTICS AND PHYSIOPATHOLOGY: The course introduces the student to the fundamental concepts of pathophysiology and semiotics, implicated in the activation of organ damage and in the development of the main diseases. The information necessary for understanding the set of events leading to the disease will be selected using a practical approach. Any further details will be reserved for the lessons that specifically deal with the organ and the apparatus. Every fundamental alteration will be explored within a specific organ and the different peculiar manifestations of the organ itself will be clarified. The lessons will also include the semeiotic part, describing the objective signs that characterize diseases. The treatment of semeiotics will be performed after treating the pathophysiology of the various organs. At the end of the course, students must be able to know the general mechanisms that lead to the disease and to identify their characteristics. CLINICAL NURSING I and II: The course offers the contents and the assistance methodology related to person's needs and to "fundamental" nursing care. The course will helps students to develop an approach oriented to prevention, assessment and management of respiratory, urinary and intestinal function alteration and the multidimensional assessment of pain. During teaching, frontal teaching methods will be privileged associated with sessions of application of the contents treated in care situations (guided exercises, video projections, clinical case analysis, testimony readings will be used to analyze and reflect on the perceptions and needs of the patients and family members). GENERAL PATHOLOGY: The course develops the preparatory contents for understanding the basic mechanisms of diseases. The following contents will be covered: the general principles and disorders of homeodynamics of complex systems, the main pathogenic esogenous and endogenous factors, biological damage, responses to damage, with particular reference to inflammation, the processes of healing and chronicity, immunity , haemostasis and thrombosis, vascular pathology and notions of general oncology. The course aims to help the student to understand the essential links between clinical analysis and fundamental mechanisms, facilitating the reading of the conceptual basis of the disease.