Are Physician Assistants Able to Correctly Identify Prescribing Errors? A Cross-Sectional Study

(1) To describe how often physician assistant (PA) students correctly identify prescribing errors and (2) examine between-cohort differences on ability to correctly identify prescribing errors.

This was a cross-sectional study of 2 cohorts of PA students at one institution. Students were presented with 3 hypothetical prescriptions, 2 of which contained a prescribing error. For each prescription, students were asked to (1) identify whether an error occurred and (2) indicate the type of error. A simple Poisson regression model analyzed the data.

We received responses from 130 students (72.6% response rate). Approximately 12% (12.3%, n = 16) correctly identified whether all 3 prescriptions were correct. The median number of correctly identified prescriptions was 1 (interquartile range = 1). There was not a statistically significant between-cohort difference identifying the correct number of prescriptions (β = 0.27, P = .10).

Physician assistant students' prescribing error identification was similar to previous research in medical and nursing students. Efforts to improve prescribing training are critical to ensure patient safety.