Electronic prescribing: Implementation of a new approach to undergraduate teaching and assessment

Electronic prescribing and medicines administration (ePMA) systems are increasingly used across UK healthcare to reduce medication errors and improve patient safety. Undergraduate medical curricula have traditionally relied on handwritten prescribing, creating misalignment between education and clinical practice. To address this, the University of Manchester introduced electronic prescribing using the British Pharmacological Society (BPS) platform across its undergraduate medical programme.

This descriptive implementation (quality improvement) report outlines a curriculum change within a large undergraduate medical programme, structured using the ADDIE model. We describe the phased development and implementation of ePMA teaching and assessment using the BPS platform. Evaluation was quality improvement in orientation and included structured feedback from students, tutors and assessors; operational metrics including technical reliability, use of paper contingency processes and examiner staffing requirements; and assessment outputs including automated marking data, item-level performance and cohort-level examination observations used to support iterative refinement.

Feedback from staff supported the feasibility and acceptability of the approach. Operational data showed low reliance on paper contingencies and reduced examiner requirements (approximately 400 examiner hours annually) for prescribing Objective Structured Clinical Examinations. Automated marking and item-level assessment outputs identified common prescribing errors and informed refinements to subsequent teaching materials.

This report describes the integration of the BPS platform into teaching and assessment within a large medical programme. Quality-improvement data suggest the approach was feasible to deliver at scale, aligned teaching and assessment closer with clinical practice and the Prescribing Safety Assessment and generated valuable data to support ongoing curriculum development and refinement.