www.ijbcp.com International Journal of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology | March-April 2016 | Vol 5 | Issue 2 Page 366 IJBCP International Journal of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology Print ISSN: 2319-2003 | Online ISSN: 2279-0780 Research Article Effect of educational intervention on the knowledge and attitude on prescribing amongst interns of a tertiary care hospital: a questionnaire based study Revathy Saravanan*, Sakthibalan M., Bikash Ranjan Meher, Balabalajee J. INTRODUCTION Pharmacology is the backbone of Clinical Medicine. 1 Prescribing correct therapy is the essential part of physicians and therefore, adequate knowledge and confidence on drugs efficacy, safety, cost, and convenience is important. 2 Lessons in Pharmacology enrich medical students’ knowledge and skill about different drugs and their utility in various diseases. 3 Aim of pharmacology should be to produce rational prescribers. Irrational prescribing leads to huge loss of lives and money. Inadequate knowledge leads to irrational prescribing. A report from National Academy of Science Institute of Medicine estimated that as many as 98,000 people die every year because of the mistakes committed by medical professionals in hospitals. Prescription errors account for 70% of medication errors that could potentially result in adverse effects. 4 Few studies have shown prescribing error rate at 34% of total prescription. 5 Every medical graduate/Physician must have an intention to prescribe rationally. It is Pharmacology, which teaches ABSTRACT Background: Prescribing correct therapy is the essential part of physicians and therefore, adequate knowledge and confidence on drugs efficacy, safety, cost, and convenience is important. Understanding the knowledge and perceptions of medical students will help to identify the problems in clinical pharmacology teaching. Prescribing performance and competence can be significantly improved by training and giving feedback to the prescriber. The objective of the study was to evaluate and compare the effect of educational intervention in enhancing the knowledge of medical interns on prescribing practice. Methods: A Cross sectional, Educational Interventional observational study was conducted using two copies of a pretested validated questionnaire (Pre & Post CME) with 15 questions among 110 MBBS interns. They were subjected to a continuous medical education on rational prescription writing followed by a hand’s on training on prescription writing in which they were divided into 9 batches and asked to prescribe for the case scenario given to them and the same was audited and feedback was given. Results: Out of 110 internees’, 105 (95.50%) and 95 (96.90%) had completely filled the pre & post educational intervention questionnaire. The overall knowledge and attitude of interns has improved after the intervention. Significant increase (P value < 0.0001) in the Mean + Standard deviation value from 5.81 + 2.1 to 7.35 + 3.18 is noted on applying Paired t Test. All the prescriptions were rational. The formats of their prescriptions were scrutinized and the precise way of writing the same was explained to the interns. Conclusions: This study clearly shows that early sensitization of Physicians about rational prescription writing during Internship phase by means of educational intervention/training program can reduce the number of prescription errors. Keywords: MBBS interns, Prescribing practice, Educational intervention DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2319-2003.ijbcp20160746 Department of Pharmacology, Sri Venkateshwaraa Medical College Hospital and Research Centre, Puducherry, India Received: 23 December 2015 Accepted: 03 February 2016 *Correspondence to: Dr. Revathy Saravanan, Email: dr_rsmail@yahoo.co.in Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open- access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non- Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non- commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.