Limitations
The total number of pharmacology educators around the world has not been
rigorously determined, but is likely to be many thousands. Our study
involved educators from every continent, but we would need a far larger,
more representative sample size to claim international consensus on our
list of core concepts. Additionally, volunteer bias could have
contributed to the outcomes of this study. These concerns are offset by
the high degree of similarity between the list of core concepts
identified by rigorous, multi-stage methodology in this study with that
of the pilot work in Australia and New Zealand. Additionally, the
participants in this study were educators; different views on the core
concepts may be held by health practitioners or pharmacologists in
industry or research. Finally, the poor response rate to the survey from
some countries and the overrepresentation of others has the potential to
bias the results towards the views of educators in those
over-represented countries. Nevertheless, the use of the text mining
approach and the high degree of similarity between the pilot study and
the present work both provide confidence that the list of core concepts
we have developed are broadly representative of the views of experts in
the discipline.