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-based pharmacotherapy
teaching, improves the competence of rational prescribing among medical students.
Methods: All 6th 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-drug for different diseases and how to apply this choice to specific patient problem, using the WHO-six steps problem solving approach.
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 for the control group was [2.1 ± 1.9].
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 among Sudanese medical students.
