The Prescribing Skills Assessment – a requirement for life

The Prescribing Skills Assessment pilot was successfully completed in June 2013 with under 5000 medical students taking part. Its introduction as a possible form of assessment came courtesy of a General Medical Council study noting that 9% of hospital prescriptions contained errors [1] and that prescribing per se was an area that new graduates found the most challenging [2]. The aim of the Prescribing Skills Assessment is to address such concerns and allow students to demonstrate competency in the safe and effective use of medicines.

This is all well and good close to graduation, but what about in practice? After all, clinicians will be expected to demonstrate such competencies well into retirement. With evolution at play and newer and more purposeful therapeutic agents being developed, surely it makes sense for such an assessment to be introduced in postgraduate training? With a rising elderly population, increasing complexity of chronic illness and the prevalence of polypharmacy, prescribing assessment should certainly not be a once-only routine.

As a clinician myself, it is all too common to lambast our students for their lack of knowledge or skills, but the reality is that postgraduates themselves are barely assessed. It would seem sensible for such enquiry to take place on a regular basis to ensure that our patients are being provided with the best care, which is effective not only from an investigative perspective but also from a therapeutic one.

Competing Interests

All authors have completed the Unified Competing Interest form at http://www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available on request from the corresponding author) and declare: no support from any organization for the submitted work; no financial relationships with any organizations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous 3 years; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.