title: The effect of additional teaching on medical students' drug administration skills in a simulated emergency scenario.
abstract: Medical students have difficulty calculating drug doses correctly, but better teaching improves their performance in written tests. We conducted a blinded, randomised, controlled trial to assess the benefit of online teaching on students' ability to administer drugs in a simulated critical incident scenario, during which they were scored on their ability to administer drugs in solution presented as a ratio (adrenaline) or percentage (lidocaine). Forty-eight final year medical students were invited to participate; 44 (92%) attended but only nine of the 20 students (45%) directed to the extra teaching viewed it. Nevertheless, the teaching module significantly improved the students' ability to calculate the correct volume of lidocaine (p = 0.005) and adrenaline (p = 0.0002), and benefited each student's overall performance (p = 0.0007). Drug administration error is a very major problem and few interventions are known to be effective. We show that focusing on better teaching at medical school may benefit patient safety.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anaesthesia, University of Cambridge, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, UK.
authors.forename: B A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Degnan
authors.forename: L J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Murray
authors.forename: C P
authors.initials: CP
authors.lastname: Dunling
authors.forename: K D
authors.initials: KD
authors.lastname: Whittlestone
authors.forename: T D A
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Standley
authors.forename: A K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Gupta
authors.forename: D W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Wheeler
mesh_terms: D000776:Anesthesiology / Q000193:education*; D000779:Anesthetics, Local / Q000008:administration & dosage; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003194:Computer-Assisted Instruction / Q000379:methods*; D004333:Drug Administration Routes; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate / Q000379:methods*; D004635:Emergency Medicine / Q000193:education*; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital; D004837:Epinephrine / Q000008:administration & dosage; D006801:Humans; D008012:Lidocaine / Q000008:administration & dosage; D008508:Medication Errors / Q000517:prevention & control; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D016037:Single-Blind Method; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods; D014662:Vasoconstrictor Agents / Q000008:administration & dosage
chemical_list: D000779:Anesthetics, Local; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations; D014662:Vasoconstrictor Agents; D008012:Lidocaine; D004837:Epinephrine