Journal of Education and Health Promotion

The short‑ and long‑term effects of a course on rational drug use: A comparative study between prefinal‑ and final‑year undergraduate medical students who attended the course in different clinical years

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

. Berna Terzioglu Bebitoglu
. Elif Oguz
. Nazife Gökçe Acet
. Esra Akdeniz
. Özlem Sarikaya

Department of Medical Education, School of Medicine, Marmara University, İstanbul, Turkey

Abstract
BACKGROUND: Rational pharmacology use and appropriate prescribing are among the key learning
outcomes in medical education. Some medical faculties include rational pharmacotherapy course
in their education programs at different years of education in Turkey. The aims of this study were to
investigate the differences in effect of rational pharmacotherapy course on short- and long-terms by
comparing two cohorts who attended the course in different clinical years of medical education by
identifying 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) and
Grade 5 (n = 47, Group B). Students were asked to complete a prescribing task both upon completion
of the course and 1 year after. The performance in prescribing was determined by prescription
scoring form. Repeated measures ANOVA was employed to test the intervention effect between
two 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 a
whole 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) from
83.91 (SD = 10.03). All the prescription components in the scripts of the Group A students worsened
significantly, except the “name of drug,” whereas Group B students maintained most of them after
1 year.
CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that the long-term retention effect of rational pharmacotherapy
course conducted in later years of education is better than the course conducted in earlier years of
education, which may be related to the fact that students in later years are more likely to take on
responsibility for patient therapy process in clinical education.

Keywords

Clinical competence
drug prescriptions
medical education
pharmacology
quasi-experimental
undergraduate
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Journal of Education and Health Promotion
Volume 11, Issue 5
June 2021
Pages 1-8

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