The Department of Pharmacology strives to lay a solid foundation on clinical pharmacology and the pharmacological basis of therapeuticsfor the medical undergraduates following the MBBS degree programme. Lectures, tutorials, ward classes, case-based discussions and student guides are used to support student learning.

Academic staff of this department also participates in integrated teaching activities conducted by the clinical departments, small group discussions conducted by the Behavioural Sciences Stream and supervision and examination of student research projects of the community medicine stream as part of the MBBS teaching programme.

The department also conducts a B.Sc. Pharmacy(Special) degree course jointly with the Faculty of Science and contributes to the B.Sc. degree in Physiotherapy programme as well.

Academics from the Department also supervise postgraduate research students who do MPhil or PhD.

The academic staff assists the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine in training specialists in several fields. There is close collaboration with the Ministry of Health, and the Department contributes as resource persons and examiners for several professional training programmes conducted by the Ministry of Health, including the one for internal pharmacists.

The Department provides a therapeutic drug monitoring service for serum lithium estimations; has a Drug information service and takes part in monitoring adverse drug reactions.

The Department has two laboratorieswith state of the art equipment and facilities to conduct undergraduate and postgraduate research in both clinical and pharmaceutical sciences.

The Department publishes the Sri Lanka Prescriber, an independent Drug Information Journal, quarterly, jointly with the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation.