Publication:

Assessment of knowledge on pharmacotherapeutics among undergraduate medical students in a South Indian medical college

Background Pharmacotherapeutics knowledge is important for rational drug therapy. Assessment of knowledge on emergency and non-emergency medical conditions in medical students will be helpful to   develop a methodological approach in building knowledge on patient care and in improving quality of medical education.

Methods It was a questionnaire based cross- sectional study conducted among undergraduate medical students in MIMS college after taking Institutional ethical committee permission. The students of final MBBS part-I and final MBBS part-II and house surgeons were given semi-structured questionnaires. It constitutes questions on awareness of pharmacotherapeutics of non-emergency (20) and emergency (8) medical conditions.

Results Received a total of 284 responses, of them 43.32%, 39.43% and 17.25% are from final MBBS part-I, final MBBS part-II and house surgeons respectively. 48.1% students agreed that undergraduate training sufficient to confidently give a safe prescription to the patient. The overall knowledge of the students in pharmacotherapeutics relating to certain non-emergency conditions is found to be 64.89% and relating to emergency conditions, it is 62.98%.

Conclusions Knowledge on emergency and non-emergency PT is moderate. Appropriate training programs are needed to improve this situation. Regular evaluative measures also help to overcome the present situation.