Can dental students and dental care providers in the Netherlands effectively and safely prescribe drugs?
Dentists and dental specialists are qualified to prescribe drugs. In this study, we assessed and compared the pharmacotherapeutic knowledge and skills of final year dental students, dentists and dental specialists in the Netherlands. In 2017, a random sample of these three groups was invited to complete an assessment. The knowledge assessment comprised 40 multiple choice questions covering often prescribed drugs. The skills assessment comprised three patient cases for which participants had to write a treatment plan. For the knowledge assessment, the response rates were 26 (20%) dental students, 28 (8%) dentists and 19 (19%) dental specialists, and for the skills assessment the response rates were 14 (11%) dental students, eight (2%) dentists, and eight (8%) dental specialists. On average, all three groups had inadequate knowledge scores (< 80%) and only a small proportion (< 30%) of their treatment plans was assessed as correct. These results suggest that dental students, dentists and dental specialists lack prescribing competence, which could be caused by poor pharmacotherapy education during under- and postgraduate dental training.