Retention of drug administration skills after intensive teaching.

We have identified deficiencies in medical students' drug administration skills, and we attempted to address them with interactive online teaching modules and simulated critical incident scenarios. Short-term improvements have been evident with this intensive effort, but medium-term retention of skills has not been measured. A drug administration lecture, an online module and a simulated emergency scenario were offered to final year clinical students.

The effect of drug concentration expression on epinephrine dosing errors: a randomized trial.

Background: The expression of drug concentration as a ratio may cause dosing errors.

Objective: To examine the effect of ratio expressions on drug administration.

Design: Randomized, blinded, controlled study.

The effect of additional teaching on medical students' drug administration skills in a simulated emergency scenario.

Medical students have difficulty calculating drug doses correctly, but better teaching improves their performance in written tests. We conducted a blinded, randomised, controlled trial to assess the benefit of online teaching on students' ability to administer drugs in a simulated critical incident scenario, during which they were scored on their ability to administer drugs in solution presented as a ratio (adrenaline) or percentage (lidocaine). Forty-eight final year medical students were invited to participate; 44 (92%) attended but only nine of the 20 students (45%) directed to the extra teaching viewed it.

Which intravenous induction agent for day surgery? A comparison of propofol, thiopentone, methohexitone and etomidate.

Eighty day patients for the vaginal termination of pregnancy were randomly allocated to receive thiopentone, propofol, methohexitone or etomidate as intravenous induction agents. The same anaesthetist administered the anaesthesia and all the observers were blind to the agents used. The results show that thiopentone and propofol produced the least sequelae at induction and in recovery.