Question 10

Compare and contrast the pharmacology of noradrenaline and vasopressin.

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College Answer

These are both level 1 drugs regularly used in intensive care. Significant depth and detail of each drug were expected. Overall knowledge was deemed to be superficial and lacked integration. Better answers identified key points of difference and overlap in areas such as structure, pharmaceutics, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, mechanism of action, adverse effects and contraindications. A tabular list of individual drug pharmacological properties alongside each other did not score as well as answers which highlighted key areas of difference and similarities.

Discussion