The aim of this project is to develop, test and implement a standardised assessment on safe prescribing during the undergraduate medical curriculum in the European Union (EU). This is necessary because current junior doctors make many prescribing errors with potential consequences for patient safety. Studies have shown that these errors are partially caused by a lack of prescribing knowledge and skills among medical graduates which is due to inadequate clinical pharmacology and therapeutics (CPT) education during the undergraduate medical curriculum. Introducing a cross-border assessment might help to improve prescribing knowledge and skills of medical graduates and harmonise the CPT education during the undergraduate medical curriculum in the EU. During this project, we will develop, test and implement an online assessment tool and question bank ('European Prescribing License'). The European Prescribing License (EPL) focuses on knowledge and skills that every EU medical graduate should have acquired in order to prescribe safely in clinical practice. An Expert Board consisting of clinical pharmacologists from each EU country will be established who are involved in item development and review. Additionally, representatives of partners universities will form an Assessment Board which oversees that items entered into question bank are fit for the intended purpose. During the project period, approximately 4,000 penultimate and final-year medical students of eight participating EU medical schools (BE, CR, EL, ES, NL, IT, PO, SE) will complete the assessment. The EPL will be accredited by the European Association for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (EACPT) and regarded as an extra quality indicator for medical graduates. Apart from the development, testing and implementation of the EPL, we will publish two research papers about the feasibility and effectivity of the EPL. Additionally, a presentation and workshop about the EPL will be held for CPT teachers during the 15th EACPT congress in 2021. Also, we will organize a short-term staff event to train clinical pharmacologists of the participating medical schools how to write high-quality items for the EPL and assess items of other teachers. By introducing the EPL, we expect that the prescribing knowledge and skills of medical graduates of the participating EU medical schools will improve. Additionally, we expect that the quality and quantity of CPT education in the participating medical schools will be improved and harmonized in order to prepare students for the EPL. After this project, the EPL will be coordinated by the Education Working Group of the EACPT. Additionally, the EPL will be freely available to all medical schools in the EU, so the number of participating medical students will eventually be much higher. By increasing the prescribing knowledge and skills of medical graduates, we expect that future medical doctors in the EU will make less prescribing errors which will contribute to improvements in the quality and safety of patient care.
The aim of this project was to develop, test and implement a standardised assessment on safe prescribing during the undergraduate medical curriculum in Europe. Our ultimate goal is to improve prescribing competence of future European medical doctors, thereby reducing prescribing errors and improving patient safety.
In many European countries, recently graduated doctors write a large proportion of drug prescriptions in hospitals, often with minimal supervision from senior clinicians. In order to prescribe safely and effectively at the start of their professional careers, medical graduates should have acquired appropriate prescribing knowledge and skills. Unfortunately, several studies throughout Europe suggest that medical students have not acquired these necessary competencies by the time they graduate. This is even more worrying since the demands on new prescribers are increasing progressively because of several trends, including a growing number of medicines, increasingly vulnerable patients, and more complicated medication regimens. Poor education in clinical pharmacology and therapeutics (CPT) during the undergraduate medical curriculum may underlie the lack of prescribing competencies among recent graduates. In most European schools, teaching is currently mainly based on passive learning methods such as listening to lectures and reading study books with little practical training. Modernizing and harmonizing CPT education at a European level might prevent and reduce prescribing errors in the future, thereby improving patient safety.