Evaluation of the Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology (CPT) Content in the McMaster Medical School Curriculum

Background: There is a high prevalence of prescribing errors because physicians lack the necessary Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology (CPT) education to formulate a safe prescription. A set of Canadian Prescribing Competencies (CPC) has been developed to indicate physician prescribing responsibilities. Objective: To evaluate the CPT and therapeutics content in the McMaster medical school’s objectives and competencies. Methods: We searched the McMaster undergraduate curriculum for competencies and objectives tagged with “pharmacology” and “toxicology”. A gap analysis was used to compare McMaster objectives and competencies to the recently established CPC themes, then the additional coverage from Australia’s National Prescribing Curriculum (NPC). Results: CPCs are divided into 10 themes with 65 individual competencies. Of McMaster’s relevant objectives, 90 were similar enough to map to the 6/10 CPC themes. Of McMaster’s competencies, 6 fell under 7/10 CPC themes. All of 117 NPC objectives and 12 NPC competencies supplemented 10/10 CPC themes, including the themes missing from McMaster curriculum. Discussion: The McMaster curriculum does not adequately address CPCs themes (20%) while the NPC items addressed each theme. This suggests that the NPC curriculum has potential to supplement the McMaster CPT education. The study is limited by the flexibility of material covered in tutorials and self-learning during medical school, and the single-person rating system. Future Directions: The mapping continues with inter-rated reliability testing. The effectiveness of the NPC modules in supplementing CPT knowledge and prescribing skills will be evaluated using a pre-post test design and an online feedback survey via ExamSoft.