Knowledge and practices of Indian dental students regarding the prescription of antibiotics and analgesics

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Making a diagnosis and prescribing medicine is the most important skill required by any doctor in the colleges, hospitals or clinical practice. Prescribing is the intervention that has the greatest influence on patients’ health requiring complex series of sub-competencies like making a diagnosis, setting a therapeutic goal, choosing the approach, choosing the best drug, route and frequency of administration, duration of therapy, writing the prescription, patient information, monitoring drug effects and, lastly, review the prescription. The aim of this research is to assess the knowledge and practices of Indian dental students regarding the prescription of antibiotics and analgesics. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 870 Undergraduate and Post-graduate dental students of Udaipur city. A close ended, pretested questionnaire was administered to students. The data were analyzed using the student’s t -test and one-way ANOVA with post hoc Bonferroni test. RESULTS: A total of 870 students participated in the study. Most of them were females and were pursuing undergraduate studies. Post graduate students had greater medication prescription knowledge than the undergraduate students. Nevertheless, practice of medication prescription among these two was found adequate. CONCLUSION: Undergraduate dental students have lower knowledge about medication prescription as compared to post-graduate students. Also, knowledge of prescription of medicines in males were higher in comparison to females, though prescription practices of all the dental students was found almost similar.