Impact of problem-based pharmacotherapy course on the competence of rational prescribing of Sudanese undergraduate medical students

Abstract

Background: Prescription writing is a skill that almost every doctor will use several times a day. But are medical students effectively taught how to write a complete and accurate prescription? Most commonly the answer is no. There is increasing need for the rational of medicines and the clearly appropriate prescribing is a key to achieve this. Objectives: To find out whether a short training course of problem teaching, improves the competence of rational prescribing among medical students. Methods: All 6 th year medical students (Batch 13), Omdurman Islamic university were randomly separated into intervention and control group. Students of intervention group were taught to choose P how to apply this choice to specific patient problem, using the WHO Results: The competence of intervention group is significantly better than the control group p =0.011. The mean results of post test for intervention group was [3.4 ± 4.5] and fo Conclusion: Teaching medical students all basic knowledge about drugs does not guarantee rational prescribing. Additional short course of problem-based pharmacotherapy could be effective in improving prescribing skills Sudanese medical students. Background Prescribing of drugs in current practice is often inappropriate and irrational. There is a great need to ensure that drugs are prescribed and used rationally 1 . Irrational drug prescribing includes practices such as polypharmacy, wrong medication for the diagnosis, use of expensive drugs when less expensive alternatives are available, use of wrong dose (both over and under-dose), and prescribing when medications are not necessary 2 . The rationality of the scripts prescribed by physician is of critical i since bad prescribing habits lead to ineffective and unsafe treatment, causing exacerbation or prolongation of disease and distress or harm to the patient, which add extra burden to the health budgets 3 .