Assessment of Medical Prescription in Pediatrics by Graduate Program Third Year’s Students at the Faculty of Medicine of Parakou in 2015

Objective: Assess learning on medical prescription for children among graduate program third year’s students at the Faculty of Medicine in Parakou.
Method: Descriptive, prospective and analytical study conducted during the 2014-2015 academic year in three phases of twelve weeks. Target population: students that were regularly enrolled in the graduate program’s third year (DCEM3) on internship in the pediatric unit during the study period. Assessment of the medical prescription writing process at the beginning and at the end of their internship, based on resolution of child’s usual health problems in tropical areas was conducted through comparision of findings. Proprtions were compared with Pearson Chi-square test at 0.05 threshold limit.
Results: 128 DCEM3 students were involved in the study. Students aged 25 to 28 years accounted for the predominant age group (54.69%). Sex ratio was 2.67. Significant improvement has been found for score 3 achievement between test1 and test2 for drugs prescription accuracy (54.77% vs. 86.677% (p=0.042), galenic presentations (31.25% vs. 78.12% (p=0.000038)), doses (42.96% vs. 75.78% (p=0.0066)) and dosages (00% vs. 20.31% (p=0.0000041)). At the end of tests 75.78% (97 students) during the second test versus 17.96% (23 students) during the first one (p=0.00002) submitted a consistent medical prescription. Gender was the only factor associated with the skills acquired or accomplished.
Conclusion: A significant progress was noted at the end of the second tests compared to the first ones. This learning method might be continued so as to help students improve their learning process.