Original Research Article
Year: 2016 | Month: July | Volume: 3 | Issue: 7 | Pages: 56-60
Teaching Pharmacology Prescription Writing and Criticism-Commenting on Fixed-Dose Combinations by Assignment-Based Method: Learning Outcome in II MBBS Students.
Aparna Chincholkar, Ranjit Wagh
Department of Pharmacology, MIMER Medical College, Talegaon (Pune) India.
Corresponding Author: Aparna Chincholkar
ABSTRACT
Teaching medical students to choose and prescribe drugs in a rational, safe, and effective manner is a major challenge for medical schools. II MBBS Pharmacology practical curriculum intends to teach the students prescription writing and also to criticize and comment on the fixed-dose combinations (FDCs). The present study was undertaken to assess the effect of an assignment-based intervention on learning outcome of II MBBS students in the area of prescription writing and criticism-commenting on FDCs.
Materials and Methods: An interventional prospective study was done pertaining to learning of prescription writing and criticism-commenting on FDCs. The participants were II MBBS students in a medical college in India. Group 1 was the 2014-15 batch (n=103), who were taught by the traditional method. Group 2 was the 2015-16 batch (n=147), who were subjected to an intervention by asking them to learn by assignment-based method. This was done by students themselves studying and writing the taught prescriptions and criticisms on FDCs in an assignment book and getting these exercises duly checked. The marks of II term-end examination in the heads of prescription writing and criticism-commenting on FDCs were compared for both the groups to assess the effect of intervention.
Results: The mean scores obtained on prescription writing by Group 1 and Group 2 was 3.06±1.12 and 3.33±0.85 respectively. The mean scores obtained on criticism-commenting on FDCs were 1.9±1.04 and 2.5±1.02 respectively.
Conclusion: Higher scores obtained by Group 2 suggested that the assignment-based method was found to be an effective intervention for learning prescription writing and criticism-commenting on FDCs, therefore the techniques based on self-learning would be useful to improve the learning outcomes.
Key words:II MBBS students, Prescription writing, Criticism-commenting on FDCs, Assignment-based method