A pharmacotherapy self-assessment improves prescribing by prompting junior doctors to study further

Junior doctors frequently prescribe incorrectly and this can cause serious harm to patients. Pharmacotherapy education in most medical schools falls short in preparing their students to prescribe safely in clinical practice. According to the theory of assessment-driven learning, a pharmacotherapy self-assessment for junior doctors may reduce potential harmful prescriptions in clinical practice, by revealing deficits in prescribing knowledge and skills.

In this single centre, prospective cohort study, the potential harmful prescriptions of junior doctors in clinical practice were compared before and after a pharmacotherapy self-assessment with and without additional pharmacotherapy education.

Potential harmful prescriptions best known to cause harm to patients were studied in all the prescriptions written out by 199 junior doctors in the first 2 months of their employment in our hospital. The pharmacotherapy self-assessment reduced the total number of potential harmful prescriptions made by junior doctors relative to those made by junior doctors in the control group (1.3 vs. 3.2%, respectively; P < .001). Additional education did not reduce potential harmful prescriptions beyond the effect of the self-assessment alone (1.3 vs. 1.0%, P > .05).

Pharmacotherapy self-assessment leads to fewer potential harmful prescriptions made by junior doctors in clinical practice, thereby improving patient safety. More research is needed to investigate whether additional pharmacotherapy education strategies reduce potential harmful prescriptions further.