Welcome to Pathophysiology (PPH611S)!
In this 16-week course, you will explore how normal physiological processes become disrupted in illness and injury, with a strong focus on understanding why patients deteriorate rather than simply recognizing disease labels. The course builds progressively from cellular and tissue-level injury to inflammation, compensation, shock, metabolic failure, and genetic risk factors, providing a solid foundation for clinical reasoning in emergency care.
Through continuous assessment tasks and weekly learning activities, you will engage with both theoretical concepts and applied clinical scenarios to strengthen your ability to analyze, interpret, and evaluate physiological disturbances. Emphasis is placed on linking underlying pathophysiology to patient presentation, vital sign changes, and patterns of clinical decline commonly encountered in prehospital and emergency settings.
This course aims to equip you with the knowledge and analytical skills needed to interpret complex physiological processes, recognize early signs of deterioration, and apply pathophysiological principles to real-world clinical decision-making. By the end of the course, you should be able to integrate cellular, systemic, metabolic, and compensatory mechanisms to better understand acute illness, injury, and patient outcomes in emergency medical care.
- Lecturer: Dillon Fredericks