How would final-year medical students perform if their skill-based prescription assessment was real life?

Abstract

Aims: Prescribing errors occur frequently, especially among junior doctors. Our aim was to investigate prescribing errors made by final-year medical students. Information on these errors can help to improve education on and assessment of clinical pharmacotherapy (CPT). Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study amongst final-year medical students at Erasmus Medical Centre, The Netherlands. Errors made in the final prescribing assessment were analysed. Errors were categorized by type, possible consequence and possibility of reaching the patient in real life. Results: A total of 381 students wrote 1502 analysable prescriptions. Forty per cent of these contained at least one error, and 54% of errors were of the inadequate information type. The rating of prescriptions for children was lower than for other question categories (P =