Objective: The aim of the study was to demonstrate the impact of a rational pharmacotherapy (RPT) clerkship reinforced via prescription audit (PA) on the prescribing skills of fifth-year medical students trained by both pharmacologists and clinicians at Gazi University Medical School.
Methods: The RPT training lasted for five days. A total of 101 medical students were included in the study. The students were asked to prescribe for standardized patients with uncomplicated essential hypertension. PA was performed on the prescriptions on the first (PA1) and last (PA2) days of the clerkship to determine the influence of the clerkship on the prescribing habits. The students were also asked to comment on PA with a short questionnaire at the end of the clerkship. The difference between PA scores was analyzed using the Mann-Whitney-Rank-Sum-test.
Results: Scores for PA1 and PA2 and the feedback of the medical students were compared. A significant improvement in PA scores was observed by the end of the clerkship. The commonest drugs in the prescriptions in both PA1 and PA2 were angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors. The feedback from the medical students revealed that PA improved their prescription skills and that the trainers helped them to reach the targets, helped them to gain self-confidence and they agreed that PA should be applied in clinical pharmacology courses.
Conclusions: RPT training reinforced via PA guided by clinicians and pharmacologists is helpful in improving the prescribing skills of medical students. ACE inhibitors were the commonest group of drugs chosen by the medical students both before and after the clerkship. Prescription audit together with the clerkship caused a significant improvement in all parts of the prescription determined by prescription audit. The cooperation of pharmacologists and clinicians helped the clerkship to reach the targets.