Evaluation of Prescription Writing Skill of Dental Students and Professionals Working in Dental Teaching Institute in Haryana

Abstract

Background: Prescription is an integral part of practice in the field of dentistry. Errors in prescription can be either knowledge or writing related. Understanding the lacunae gives an insight to improvement in this vital clinical skill.Aim: To evaluate prescription writing pattern in a dental teaching Institute in Haryana with primary objective to identify the most common errors in prescription writing among students and faculty and secondary objective to assess overall performance and prescription writing skills.Methods and Material: The hospital based cross-sectional, descriptive survey was conducted with 194 participants with a problem based approach requiring response in the form of complete prescription. Undergraduate students of third and final year, interns along with post graduate students and faculty were included. Each prescription was analysed for 28 parameters. Six prescriber related, five patient related, eleven drug related, and seven Miscellaneous parameters. Each parameter was scored as one if present and zero if absent. Total score for each parameter and total score of each prescription was calculated and graded as poor score 0-7, medium or fair score 8-14, good score 15-22.and 22-30 excellent.Results: The patient and doctors related parameters were most deficient followed by miscellaneous and drug related parameters. Maximum prescription were of fair quality. Undergraduate prescription was well written in comparison to other groups.Conclusions: There is a need to emphasis, audit and revise the art of prescription writing throughout the curriculum and later stages too