European Prescribing License: Preparing future medical doctors in the European Union for safe prescribing Erasmus Project

Project Title

European Prescribing License: Preparing future medical doctors in the European Union for safe prescribing

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The aim of this project is to develop, test and implement a standardised assessment on safe prescribing during the undergraduate medical curriculum in the European Union (EU). This is necessary because current junior doctors make many prescribing errors with potential consequences for patient safety. Studies have shown that these errors are partially caused by a lack of prescribing knowledge and skills among medical graduates which is due to inadequate clinical pharmacology and therapeutics (CPT) education during the undergraduate medical curriculum. Introducing a cross-border assessment might help to improve prescribing knowledge and skills of medical graduates and harmonise the CPT education during the undergraduate medical curriculum in the EU.
During this project, we will develop, test and implement an online assessment tool and question bank (‘European Prescribing License’). The European Prescribing License (EPL) focuses on knowledge and skills that every EU medical graduate should have acquired in order to prescribe safely in clinical practice. An Expert Board consisting of clinical pharmacologists from each EU country will be established who are involved in item development and review. Additionally, representatives of partners universities will form an Assessment Board which oversees that items entered into question bank are fit for the intended purpose. During the project period, approximately 4,000 penultimate and final-year medical students of eight participating EU medical schools (BE, CR, EL, ES, NL, IT, PO, SE) will complete the assessment. The EPL will be accredited by the European Association for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (EACPT) and regarded as an extra quality indicator for medical graduates.
Apart from the development, testing and implementation of the EPL, we will publish two research papers about the feasibility and effectivity of the EPL. Additionally, a presentation and workshop about the EPL will be held for CPT teachers during the 15th EACPT congress in 2021. Also, we will organize a short-term staff event to train clinical pharmacologists of the participating medical schools how to write high-quality items for the EPL and assess items of other teachers.
By introducing the EPL, we expect that the prescribing knowledge and skills of medical graduates of the participating EU medical schools will improve. Additionally, we expect that the quality and quantity of CPT education in the participating medical schools will be improved and harmonized in order to prepare students for the EPL. After this project, the EPL will be coordinated by the Education Working Group of the EACPT. Additionally, the EPL will be freely available to all medical schools in the EU, so the number of participating medical students will eventually be much higher. By increasing the prescribing knowledge and skills of medical graduates, we expect that future medical doctors in the EU will make less prescribing errors which will contribute to improvements in the quality and safety of patient care.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 391740 Eur

Project Coordinator

STICHTING VUMC & Country: NL

Project Partners

• SVEUCILISTE U ZAGREBU MEDICINSKI FAKULTET
• ALMA MATER STUDIORUM – UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA
• LINKOPINGS UNIVERSITET
• UNIVERSIDADE DE LISBOA
• UNIVERSITEIT GENT
• ARISTOTELIO PANEPISTIMIO THESSALONIKIS
• UNIVERSIDAD DE LA LAGUNA