. Berna Terzioglu Bebitoglu; . Elif Oguz; . Nazife Gökçe Acet; . Esra Akdeniz; . Özlem Sarikaya
Volume 11, Issue 5 , June 2021, , Pages 1-8
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Rational pharmacology use and appropriate prescribing are among the key learningoutcomes in medical education. Some medical faculties include rational pharmacotherapy coursein ...
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BACKGROUND: Rational pharmacology use and appropriate prescribing are among the key learningoutcomes in medical education. Some medical faculties include rational pharmacotherapy coursein their education programs at different years of education in Turkey. The aims of this study were toinvestigate the differences in effect of rational pharmacotherapy course on short- and long-terms bycomparing two cohorts who attended the course in different clinical years of medical education byidentifying which parameters of prescription items are different among groups.MATERIALS AND METHODS: This quasi-experimental study was conducted in School of Medicine.Participants consisted of 157 students who attended the course in Grade 4 (n = 110, Group A) andGrade 5 (n = 47, Group B). Students were asked to complete a prescribing task both upon completionof the course and 1 year after. The performance in prescribing was determined by prescriptionscoring form. Repeated measures ANOVA was employed to test the intervention effect betweentwo periods. McNemar test was employed to measure the change in each item on the prescription.Point-biserial correlations between each item on the prescription and their scores on the test as awhole were calculated.RESULTS: The mean score of Group A dropped to 59.41 (standard deviation [SD] = 14.06)from 90.43 (SD = 8.90), and the mean score of Group B dropped to 73.37 (SD = 12.56) from83.91 (SD = 10.03). All the prescription components in the scripts of the Group A students worsenedsignificantly, except the “name of drug,” whereas Group B students maintained most of them after1 year.CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that the long-term retention effect of rational pharmacotherapycourse conducted in later years of education is better than the course conducted in earlier years ofeducation, which may be related to the fact that students in later years are more likely to take onresponsibility for patient therapy process in clinical education.
