Introduction of case based teaching to impart rational pharmacotherapy skills in undergraduate medical students

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to assess the impact of case based teaching (CBT) on learning rational prescribing and to compare CBT with the traditional method of teaching (TRD). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Second year Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) students (n = 179) were administered a pre-test and randomly divided into groups to receive CBT (n = 96) and TRD (n = 83). CBT group was further sub-divided into CBT1 and CBT2. Both these groups were taught two topics each by CBT and TRD during tutorials; however, the topics were switched with respect to method of teaching. The post-test comprised of three therapeutic problems of which two were related, and one was not related to the tutorial topics. Marks obtained in the post-test were graded and analysed using Fischer's exact test. RESULTS: In the post-test, the therapeutic problems on diabetes mellitus and peptic ulcer were attempted by 85.41% students from CBT and 73.49% from TRD group. CBT group obtained more marks for these problems (4.23 ± 0.94; P < 0.001) than the TRD (3.32 ± 0.92) group. Also, more students in the CBT obtained grade 3 (P < 0.001) and fewer obtained grade 1 (P < 0.01), compared to the TRD group. When the grades of the two CBT groups were compared, it was found that fewer students in CBT 2 had obtained grade 1 and those scoring higher grades were comparable between the two groups. For the therapeutic problem on malaria, 7.29% students from CBT and 18.07% from TRD received 0 grade (P < 0.05). More students received ≥ 2 grade in CBT group (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Use of CBT during tutorials is better than TRD and facilitates learning of rational pharmacotherapy.