Impact of educational session on knowledge and attitude towards teratogenicity among undergraduate medical students: a comparative study

Abstract

Background: Teratogenicity is a major cause of abortion, still birth and can result in longterm disability with a significant impact on individuals, families, societies and healthcare systems. Drugs being one of the causes of teratogenicity, creating awareness among medical students, the future prescribing physicians, the rate of teratogenicity can be decreased. The objective was to compare the attitude and knowledge about teratogenicity among the medical undergraduates before and after an educational session on teratogenicity.Methods: A pre-validated semi structured questionnaire on attitude and knowledge about teratogenicity was distributed to 2nd year medical students (147) before and after teratogenicity educational session. Results obtained were compared within the group. Paired t test was used for within the group comparison. P-Value <0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.Results: Improvement in knowledge showed statistically significant improvement following teratogenicity educational session (P-Value=0.0003). Improvement was there in post session attitude scores as well, however, it was not significant (P-Value=0.64).Conclusions: Early reinforcement about teratogenicity in medical students enables them to decide appropriate drug therapy while prescribing for females of reproductive age group.

Impact of educational intervention on the awareness of undergraduate medical students towards teratogenicity: an observational study

“…These results are consistent with the previous published studies. 18,19 Also, very few percentages of students about 33.58% knew about all the five US-FDA risk categories. Also, only 33.2% and 22.3% of students were able to mention the names of two teratogenic drugs and teartogenic defects associated with drugs respectively.…”

“…These results were consistent with the previous published studies. 18,19 When the mean knowledge score of the students after the educational intervention was compared with the mean knowledge score at pre-intervention it was found that there was a significant improvement indicating the impact of educational session and scope for improvement with the early intervention among the students.…”