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Prescribing competency assessment for Canadian medical students: a pilot evaluation

BACKGROUND: The knowledge and ability to prescribe safely and effectively is a core competency for every graduating medical student. Our previous research suggested concerns about medical student prescribing abilities, and interest in a standardized assessment process. METHODS: A multi-year cross-se...

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Autores principales: Holbrook, Anne, Liu, J. Tiger, Rieder, Michael, Gibson, Michelle, Levine, Mitchell, Foster, Gary, Perri, Dan, Maxwell, Simon
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Canadian Medical Education Journal 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6445319/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30949264
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author Holbrook, Anne
Liu, J. Tiger
Rieder, Michael
Gibson, Michelle
Levine, Mitchell
Foster, Gary
Perri, Dan
Maxwell, Simon
author_facet Holbrook, Anne
Liu, J. Tiger
Rieder, Michael
Gibson, Michelle
Levine, Mitchell
Foster, Gary
Perri, Dan
Maxwell, Simon
author_sort Holbrook, Anne
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The knowledge and ability to prescribe safely and effectively is a core competency for every graduating medical student. Our previous research suggested concerns about medical student prescribing abilities, and interest in a standardized assessment process. METHODS: A multi-year cross-sectional study evaluating the feasibility, acceptability, and discriminative ability of an online prescribing competency assessment for final year Canadian medical students was conducted. Students at nine sites of four Ontario medical schools were invited to participate in an online one-hour exam of eight domains related to prescribing safely. Student feedback on perceived fairness, clarity, and ease of use formed the primary outcome. Exam performance and parity between schools were the secondary outcome. RESULTS: A total of 714 students completed the assessment during spring final review courses between 2016 and 2018. Student feedback was more favourable than not for appropriateness of content (53.5% agreement vs 18.3% disagreement), clarity of questions (65.5% agreement vs 11.6% disagreement), question layout and presentation (70.8% agreement vs 12.2% disagreement), and ease of use of online interface (67.1% agreement vs 13.6% disagreement). Few (23.6% believed their course work had prepared them for the assessment. Mean total exam score was 70.0% overall (SD 10.4%), with 47.6% scoring at or above the pass threshold of 70%. Conclusion: Our prescribing competency assessment proved feasible, acceptable, and discriminative, and indicated a need for better medical school training to improve prescribing competency. Further evaluation in a larger sample of medical schools is warranted.
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spelling pubmed-64453192019-04-04 Prescribing competency assessment for Canadian medical students: a pilot evaluation Holbrook, Anne Liu, J. Tiger Rieder, Michael Gibson, Michelle Levine, Mitchell Foster, Gary Perri, Dan Maxwell, Simon Can Med Educ J Brief Reports BACKGROUND: The knowledge and ability to prescribe safely and effectively is a core competency for every graduating medical student. Our previous research suggested concerns about medical student prescribing abilities, and interest in a standardized assessment process. METHODS: A multi-year cross-sectional study evaluating the feasibility, acceptability, and discriminative ability of an online prescribing competency assessment for final year Canadian medical students was conducted. Students at nine sites of four Ontario medical schools were invited to participate in an online one-hour exam of eight domains related to prescribing safely. Student feedback on perceived fairness, clarity, and ease of use formed the primary outcome. Exam performance and parity between schools were the secondary outcome. RESULTS: A total of 714 students completed the assessment during spring final review courses between 2016 and 2018. Student feedback was more favourable than not for appropriateness of content (53.5% agreement vs 18.3% disagreement), clarity of questions (65.5% agreement vs 11.6% disagreement), question layout and presentation (70.8% agreement vs 12.2% disagreement), and ease of use of online interface (67.1% agreement vs 13.6% disagreement). Few (23.6% believed their course work had prepared them for the assessment. Mean total exam score was 70.0% overall (SD 10.4%), with 47.6% scoring at or above the pass threshold of 70%. Conclusion: Our prescribing competency assessment proved feasible, acceptable, and discriminative, and indicated a need for better medical school training to improve prescribing competency. Further evaluation in a larger sample of medical schools is warranted. Canadian Medical Education Journal 2019-03-13 /pmc/articles/PMC6445319/ /pubmed/30949264 Text en © 2019 Holbrook, Liu, Rieder, Gibson, Levine, Foster, Perri, Maxwell; licensee Synergies Partners http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Journal Systems article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Brief Reports
Holbrook, Anne
Liu, J. Tiger
Rieder, Michael
Gibson, Michelle
Levine, Mitchell
Foster, Gary
Perri, Dan
Maxwell, Simon
Prescribing competency assessment for Canadian medical students: a pilot evaluation
title Prescribing competency assessment for Canadian medical students: a pilot evaluation
title_full Prescribing competency assessment for Canadian medical students: a pilot evaluation
title_fullStr Prescribing competency assessment for Canadian medical students: a pilot evaluation
title_full_unstemmed Prescribing competency assessment for Canadian medical students: a pilot evaluation
title_short Prescribing competency assessment for Canadian medical students: a pilot evaluation
title_sort prescribing competency assessment for canadian medical students: a pilot evaluation
topic Brief Reports
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6445319/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30949264
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