Syllabus — Professional Development Short Course
Eight sessions of ninety minutes, or six if that is what you have. For clinicians, pharmacists, nurses and advanced practice nurses, dietitians, and trainers — anyone who is already being asked about these compounds by people who have decided to ask them.
This is not a survey. Participants in this room do not need to be introduced to insulin and most of them will never care about peptide synthesis chemistry. What they need is a method they can run in the eight minutes an appointment actually contains, and a way to conduct the resulting conversation without the patient concealing the next thing.
The course is weighted to Chapters 5, 12, 19, 29, 34, 37, 38, and 39. Everything else is context, handout, or optional.
The distinctive outcome
Every professional-development course promises that participants will "be able to evaluate the evidence." This one has a narrower and more testable target:
Participants leave able to have the Chapter 39 conversation without losing the patient.
That is: able to respond to "I've been taking BPC-157 for my shoulder" or "my friend gets semaglutide online for a third of the price" in a way that is honest about the evidence, honest about what is unknown, honest about the risks that have nothing to do with whether the molecule works — and that leaves the person willing to tell them the next thing.
This is a harder skill than evidence appraisal and it is the one participants will use on Monday. Session 7 is the course, and Sessions 1–6 exist to make Session 7 possible. Plan accordingly: if you find yourself running long in Session 4, cut Session 4.
Why the outcome is framed this way. A dismissive response does not change what a patient takes. It changes whether they will mention it — to you, to the next clinician, to the anesthesiologist before a procedure. Concealment is the adverse event this course is trying to prevent, and it is one that professional confidence produces more often than professional ignorance does.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
- Rate an unfamiliar claim in under five minutes using the four-tier system, with a population, an endpoint, a date, and a falsification condition.
- Distinguish evidence-absent from evidence-present-and-negative, and explain to a patient why the second is a stronger state of knowledge.
- Separate the three risk categories — risk at studied use, risk at unstudied use, and risk from preparation quality — and explain why the third is independent of efficacy.
- Explain what a certificate of analysis can and cannot establish about the vial in front of them.
- Explain why regulatory status is not evidence, in both directions, and name the five meanings of "not approved."
- Name the peptide medicines already in routine practice, and use that as the anchor for the conversation rather than as trivia.
- Discuss access, cost, and shortage pressure without either dismissing or endorsing the workaround a patient has found.
- Conduct the Chapter 39 conversation in role-play, assessed against a checklist, without producing concealment.
- Maintain a short personal evidence file — three compounds, twelve fields — for the questions they actually get asked.
Session plan (eight sessions)
| # | Focus | Core reading | Handouts | In-session work |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The method. Why "it's a peptide" tells you nothing. The four tiers and the six frozen rules. | Ch. 5 (Ch. 1 skim) | Appendix D, Appendix K | Rate three claims cold, then compare. Set up the personal file: choose three compounds you are actually asked about. |
| 2 | What is already in your practice. Peptide medicines by indication; the century-old ones. | Ch. 29 (Ch. 11 skim) | Appendix E | Participants list every peptide medicine they have handled this year. The list is always longer than the room expects. |
| 3 | Metabolic peptides and the access problem. Demand, cost, shortage, compounding, and the conversation about the workaround. | Ch. 12 (Ch. 7–8 skim) | Appendix A rows | Structured discussion: the patient who is sourcing around a cost barrier. No endorsement, no dismissal — practice both failure modes deliberately, then the third option. |
| 4 | The gray market. Risk that is independent of efficacy. Research-labeled material, quality, and what "no reported side effects" actually means when there is no reporting pathway. | Ch. 19 | Appendix F | Three-column risk sort: studied use / unstudied use / preparation quality. |
| 5 | What a certificate proves. Identity, purity, and the difference between a sample and a vial. | Ch. 34 (Ch. 32 skim) | — | Work a [constructed teaching example] certificate: what it establishes, what it does not, and what question it cannot answer. |
| 6 | The table and the rulebook. The master evidence table; regulation and the five meanings of "not approved"; sport and anti-doping status. | Ch. 37, 38 | Appendix A, Appendix G | Disagreement round: find one rating in Appendix A you would rate differently, and argue it. |
| 7 | The conversation. (The core session — protect it.) | Ch. 39 | Conversation checklist (below) | Role-play, assessed. Three scenarios, rotating roles, structured feedback. |
| 8 | Capstone. Bring a real claim you were asked about last month. | Ch. 6, Appendix C | Appendix C, Appendix H | Each participant works one claim end to end and presents it in four lines. Personal file completed. |
The Session 7 conversation checklist
Participants are assessed against this in role-play, and it is the artifact most of them keep.
BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE
[ ] Thank them for telling you. Say it out loud.
[ ] Ask what they are hoping it will do. (The claim, in their words.)
[ ] Ask what they have noticed. (The observation, accepted as an observation.)
ESTABLISH THE CLAIM
[ ] Restate it with a population and an endpoint.
[ ] Confirm you have it right before you evaluate it.
SAY WHAT IS KNOWN
[ ] Name the state of the evidence, not a verdict on them.
[ ] If it is absent, say "nobody has studied this" -- not "it doesn't work."
[ ] If it is present and negative, say so, and say it is the stronger
state of knowledge.
[ ] Give the date. "As of now" is a real qualifier, not a hedge.
SAY WHAT IS RISKED
[ ] Separate the three risk categories out loud.
[ ] Name the preparation-quality risk as independent of whether it works.
[ ] Name anything procedure-relevant they must disclose to other
clinicians -- and explain why, so it survives the appointment.
LEAVE THE DOOR OPEN
[ ] "Tell me if anything changes" -- and mean it.
[ ] Offer what you would want to see before your view changed.
[ ] Do not require them to stop as a condition of continued care.
DO NOT
[ ] Do not laugh, sigh, or use the word "obviously."
[ ] Do not evaluate their judgment. Evaluate the claim.
[ ] Do not supply dosing, protocols, or sourcing -- including
"safer" versions of any of the three.
Scenario notes. Use three constructed scenarios, escalating: (1) a patient using a well-evidenced approved product obtained through an unverifiable channel; (2) a patient using a compound rated ❌ for their claim, with an honest personal observation of benefit; (3) a colleague — not a patient — recommending something. The third catches people who have the patient conversation right and lose composure entirely with a peer.
Assessment
Professional-development settings vary in whether they grade at all. If credit requires assessment:
| Component | Weight | Instrument |
|---|---|---|
| Session 7 role-play | 35% | Conversation checklist, assessed by peer + facilitator |
| Personal evidence file (three compounds, twelve fields) | 30% | Evidence dossier rubric, scaled to three entries |
| Session 8 capstone claim, presented in four lines | 20% | Claim evaluation rubric |
| Participation across sessions | 15% | Participation rubric |
If the setting is non-credit, keep the role-play and the personal file and drop the rest. Those two are what participants take out of the room.
Scope note: mixed rooms
This course is designed for a mixed room, and mixed rooms have a specific hazard. Trainers, coaches, and dietitians in most jurisdictions cannot legally advise on prescription medicines, and some participants will not be clear on where their line is. Name it explicitly in Session 1 rather than letting it surface awkwardly in Session 7.
The framing that works: the method in this course is the same for everyone in the room; what you do with the output is not. A trainer who can accurately say "the claim is that it accelerates tendon healing, and as of now there is no human trial testing that — this is a question for your physician, and here is how to raise it so you get a real answer" has done something genuinely valuable and has stayed entirely within scope. That sentence is the deliverable for the non-prescribing half of the room, and it is worth writing on the board.
Course policy: no dosing, protocols, or sourcing
The book contains none, deliberately, and this course adds none — not in materials, not in discussion, not in the role-plays, and not in response to a direct question from a participant who prescribes. This will feel artificial to prescribers in Session 3 and it is still the right rule for a mixed room: a dosing conversation that a prescriber can have appropriately is not one the whole room can have, and the course cannot partition itself mid-session.
Every invented example is labeled [constructed teaching example].
What to cut if you run short
To get to six sessions:
- Merge Sessions 2 and 5. Chapter 29 and Chapter 34 combine into one session on "what is real and how you would know," using Appendix E and a constructed certificate.
- Merge Sessions 6 and 8. Chapters 37 and 38 shrink to the Appendix A and G handouts plus the disagreement round, and the capstone claim moves into the same session.
That preserves Sessions 1 (method), 3 (access), 4 (gray market), and 7 (the conversation) intact, which is the right skeleton.
To get to four, keep 1, 4, 7, and a merged capstone. Below four sessions this is a lecture rather than a course, and the role-play is the first thing that stops fitting — at which point the distinctive outcome is gone and you should be honest with participants about what they are getting.
Never cut Session 7. If the calendar collapses, cut content and run the role-play, not the reverse.
Related: Chapter 5 · Chapter 12 · Chapter 19 · Chapter 29 · Chapter 34 · Chapter 37 · Chapter 38 · Chapter 39 · Appendix A · Appendix C · Appendix E · Appendix F · Appendix G · How to Teach This Book · Where Students Get Stuck · Evidence Dossier Rubric · Claim Evaluation Rubric · Participation Rubric