Three Rounds of Delphi method
In Round One, expert group members were given the consolidated list of 74 candidate terms, which was produced by merging the outcomes of text mining of five key textbooks with the survey responses from 163 pharmacology educators. Individually and without consultation, expert group members analysed each term using the five core concepts criteria and then voted as to whether they perceived each term in the list to be a core concept of pharmacology education or not. Members were also asked to identify any potential core concepts of pharmacology absent from the list of 74 terms. The terms that achieved a minimum threshold of 80% agreement by the expert group members were accepted as core concepts and not discussed further. Terms that were agreed to be core concepts by less than 50% of expert group members in Round One were rejected and not discussed further. In Round Two, the terms deemed missing from the candidate list within Round One were analysed and voted on using the same criteria.
Additional online workshops were held between Rounds Two and Three. The intention of these workshops was to refine the list of core concepts, by clarifying areas of duplication, overlap, and hierarchical disconnect. Expert group members attended one of two online sessions into which they self-selected, depending on their area of expertise: i) pharmacokinetic (PK, led by CG and ST) core concepts; or ii) pharmacodynamic (PD, led by JK and LG) core concepts. In the workshops, the co-leads facilitated a discussion on the small groups of related terms, which we called clusters (for example, margin of safety and therapeutic index ) that had emerged during Rounds One and Two. The research team recommended a single term from each cluster to be included in Round Three voting, and these recommendations were voted on by the experts prior to the workshop. Discussions within the workshop focused on recommendations for which there was less than 80% agreement.
In Round Three, expert group members analysed the terms that received between 50-79% agreement in Rounds One and Two. The co-leads for the two sub-groups (pharmacokinetics; CG and ST, and pharmacodynamics; JK and LG) separated the terms into PK and PD groupings.
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Results

The exploratory phase of the project was designed to provide the expert group with a comprehensive list of proposed core concepts, comprised of both the terms most frequently found in the five key textbook chapters and those identified through the survey of 163 international educators.