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Unit Synopsis
This unit provides you with an understanding of the role of the clinical biochemistry laboratory in the diagnosis and management of human diseases and disorders. The unit focuses on quality control in the pathology laboratory setting, the biochemical rationale for the diagnosis, prognosis, and monitoring of blood electrolyte balance, blood gases, blood acid-base balance, hormones, diabetes mellitus, jaundice, cardiac and liver disease, gout, inherited metabolic disorders, renal dysfunction and malignant diseases. You will be instructed on correct procedures for preparing blood and urine samples for analysis, and for interpreting results in a clinical biochemistry laboratory.
Details
| Level | Undergraduate |
|---|---|
| Unit Level | 2 |
| Credit Points | 6 |
| Student Contribution Band | SCA Band 2 |
| Fraction of Full-Time Student Load | 0.125 |
| Pre-requisites or Co-requisites |
Pre-requisites BMSC11004 Introductory Biochemistry OR BMSC11005 Foundations of Biochemistry Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework). |
| Class Timetable | View Unit Timetable |
| Residential School |
Compulsory Residential School View Unit Residential School |
Unit Availabilities from Term 1 - 2024
Term 1 - 2024 Profile
Term 3 - 2024 Profile
Term 1 - 2025 Profile
Term 3 - 2025 Profile
Term 1 - 2026 Profile
Term 3 - 2026 Profile
Attendance Requirements
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
Recommended Student Time Commitment
Each 6-credit Undergraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.
Assessment Tasks
| Assessment Task | Weighting |
|---|---|
| 1. Written Assessment | 25% |
| 2. Practical and Written Assessment | 25% |
| 3. Examination | 50% |
This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of ‘pass’ in order to pass the unit. If any ‘pass/fail’ tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully (‘pass’ grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the ‘assessment task’ section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%).
Past Exams
All University policies are available on the Policy web site, however you may wish to directly view the following policies below.
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of policies are available on the Policy web site .
Term 1 - 2024 : The overall satisfaction for students in the last offering of this course was 88.89% (`Agree` and `Strongly Agree` responses), based on a 18.37% response rate.
Feedback, Recommendations and Responses
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
Source: SUTE
The lecturer was knowledgeable and engaging; the content was relevant, linked to other units and our course, despite the complex nature of the material
Continue the delivery style and further enhance the face to face delivery component
The delivery style and content with enhanced face to face tutorials and updated contextualised content was maintained.
Source: SUTE
The residential school helped students be engaged with the content and the UC and conceptualise their understanding
Continue to maintain and enhance the residential school delivery and provide engagement opportunities and mini tutorials within the laboratory sessions
Continued to enhance the residential school with updates to clinical applications.
Source: SUTE
The assessment items seemed lengthy and complicated to complete
Provide more tutorial support to complete the continuous assessment items
Continued to deliver additional tutorials for assessment items and adjust complexity and word count requirement for the case study assessment item.
Source: Direct student communication, SUTE
Student feedback reflected an increased face to face delivery/tutorial component.
Consider additional face to face components for the tutorials
In Progress
Source: SUTE; Unit Coordinator
The unit content includes a core foundation that can reasonably be maintained, however some modules are now outdated due to the changing body of knowledge underpinning the diagnosis and treatment of various pathophysiologies.
Continue to update course content to mantain currency
In Progress
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- Describe basic cell signalling, communication and metabolism (breakdown of proteins, fats and carbohydrates under aerobic conditions)
- Recall, classify and evaluate significant pathological conditions which occur in the human body and their respective biochemical tests and assays
- Recall and describe the major functions of a clinical pathology laboratory
- Demonstrate competency in biochemical laboratory methods, test and techniques
- Evaluate the scientific literature and communicate this knowledge and understanding via scientific writing tasks such as practical reports and case study problem based learning assessment items.
| Assessment Tasks | Learning Outcomes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| 1 - Written Assessment | • | • | • | • | |
| 2 - Practical and Written Assessment | • | • | • | • | • |
| 3 - Examination | • | • | • | ||
| Graduate Attributes | Learning Outcomes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| 1 - Communication | • | • | • | • | |
| 2 - Problem Solving | • | • | • | • | • |
| 3 - Critical Thinking | • | • | • | • | |
| 4 - Information Literacy | • | • | • | • | |
| 5 - Team Work | • | ||||
| 6 - Information Technology Competence | • | • | |||
| 7 - Cross Cultural Competence | • | ||||
| 8 - Ethical practice | • | • | |||
| Assessment Tasks | Graduate Attributes | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 10 | |