Improving prescribing with digital learning

Period 2017 – 2024

Medical students and junior doctors in the Netherlands and other European countries have low self-reported prescribing competence and feel unprepared for prescribing medicine. Therefore, efforts are made to improve both undergraduate and graduate prescribing education. Digital learning may be ideal for this purpose, since it has several benefits over traditional learning. For example digital learnings are student-centered, placing the learner in charge of the time, pace, place and order in which they study. This is a specific asset when teaching busy clinicians. Moreover, digital learnings require a single investment of time and resources, after which they may be distributed and used extensively, without additional costs. This creates possibilities for national or even international courses to be developed. However, much remains unknown about the effects of digital learning. We aim to evaluate the effect of digital learning in prescribing practice and identify quality indicators for digital learning modules in order to develop the perfect digital learning. Moreover, future physicians are assisted by a growing number of clinical decision support systems (CDSS). We will develop a CDSS for the most prevalent and serious prescribing errors . We hypothesize that these systems may not only help to reduce prescribing errors, but have important education effects as well. This animation illustrates the goal of de CDSS.

PhD-student: Michiel Bakkum, m.bakkum@amsterdamumc.nl
Promotor: Prof. dr. M.A. van Agtmael
Co-promotors: Dr. J. Tichelaar & Dr. M.C. Richir