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Background: Every medical graduate must have the intention to prescribe rationally. It is pharmacology which teaches rational of prescribing of drug in undergraduate medical course. Therefore, many eminent medical educationists believe that pharmacology is the most essential part of the medical curriculum. Medical graduates join as interns in their respective teaching hospital immediately after graduation. Although interns work is usually under the supervision of a senior consultant but there are occasions, when they need to make their own decision. Internship is the intermediate period between under-graduation and general practice. The dexterity of health professional relies upon prescribing practices. Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics (CPT) is a crucial discipline for interns to acquire safe and rational prescription of drugs. This study was conducted with the intention to provide some light about the knowledge of pharmacology among the interns in RIMS Hospital Raichur, Karnataka.Methods: The study was done on interns of RIMS, Raichur. It was a descriptive questionnaire-based prospective study. A structured questionnaire modified from the work of Oshikoya et al, was used in the study which included four major categories namely basic demographic information, undergraduate CPT teaching, experience of adverse drug reaction (ADR) and any deficiency in the under-graduate CPT teaching.Results: Out of these 107 participants 54 (42%) rated pharmacology knowledge is good, while another 53(40%) had average understanding. As high as 80% (85) intern population feel that undergraduate training has prepared them to prescribe safely. 45 (41%) interns have already observed cases of adverse drug reactions in their short active clinical life.Conclusions: The present study has identified that pharmacology and therapeutics course curriculum is not enough to produce safe prescribers.
ABSTRACT
Background: Internship is the intermediate period between under-graduation and general practice. The dexterity of health professional relies upon prescribing practices. Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics (CPT) is a crucial discipline for interns to acquire safe and rational prescription of drugs. Cultivating sound knowledge about CPT during under graduation is, henceforth, mandatory. Aims and objectives: 1. To assess whether the undergraduate CPT teaching and internship training had prepared interns adequately for safe and rational prescription. 2. To assess the awareness and reporting of adverse drug reaction (ADR). Methods: 110 interns were enrolled after obtaining informed written consent. A structured questionnaire was given to them including basic demographic information, undergraduate CPT teaching, experience of ADR and any deficiency in the under-graduate CPT teaching. Results: Response rate was 91 % in which 53 were males and 47 females. 81 considered themselves aware of CPT. 56% & 57% interns were able to prescribe drug safely and rationally respectively. Without supervision, they were confident to prescribe antacids (93%), vitamins and minerals (90%), NSAIDS (85%), antihistamines (82%), antibiotics (75%), antiemetics (62%) and antiasthmatics (52%). Only 22% had reported ADR and opined that it could lead to hospitalization (51%), prolonged hospital stay (33%), morbidity (16%) and death (21%). According to interns, the topics where more emphasis needed were ADR, dosage calculation, pediatric and emergency medicine and therapeutic drug monitoring during undergraduate CPT teaching. Conclusion: CPT teaching should be improved at undergraduate level for safe and rational prescribing including ADR monitoring, ADR reporting and dosage calculation.
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The Journal of Korean Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (JKSCPT) as a peer-reviewed semi-annual journal has published lots of clinical pharmacology articles of various fields since its first issue in May 1993. Particularly, a number of high-quality articles such as randomized controlled prospective clinical trials have been presented in this journal. The JKSCPT currently has been also indexed in Scopus, one of the famous international bibliographic databases, and the candidate journal accredited by the National Research Foundation of Korea. Although the JKSCPT has accumulated outstanding achievements as the specialized journal for clinical pharmacology in Korea, it is also true that there are many problems to be solved in order to be a more internationally recognized journal. The methods to analyze the status of a journal for the academic society were first suggested in this article. The SWOT analysis on the current status of the JKSCPT was done for establishing future development strategies. Making references to these analyzing methods of a journal and SWOT analysis, numerous problems and the suggestions for the development of the JKSCPT were presented in detail. The future model of the journal for the academic society was also briefly discussed.
Subject(s)
Achievement , Databases, Bibliographic , Korea , Pharmacology, ClinicalABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: To grasp the status and future directions, an analysis was done on the articles published in the Journal of Korean Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics during recent 19 years. METHODS: All the articles published from 1993 through 2011 were retrospectively analyzed. The number of articles and their language distribution were assessed. The articles were classified according to research types. Authors' affiliations and research fields of articles were also analyzed. RESULTS: The Journal of Korean Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics as a semi-annual journal published 353 articles (3,659 pages in total) since its first issue in May 1993. A total of 37 issues were published with the average of 10.1 articles per issue. Most articles were written in the Korean language (94.9 %). In publication type of articles, 13.2 % were review articles, 66.7 % original articles, 18.0 % symposium articles, and the rest other types. In affiliation analysis, most authors were from the academia (91.0 %), next from the industry (5.8 %), and thirdly from the authority (2.3 %). The research field dealt with the highest (28.0 %) was Pharmockinetics/Pharmacodynamics/Pharmacometrics (PPP), core of clinical pharmacology. Many articles in PPP field contained the randomized controlled prospective clinical trials, which are the highest level of evidence, indicating high quality of articles. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that the Journal of Korean Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics reflects typically the specialized journal for clinical pharmacology. The internationalization efforts for our journal is also required.