[Face-to-face education to optimize knowledge in patients initiating oral anticoagulant treatment (OAT)].

Background: Insufficient knowledge of patients about oral anticoagulants that they have been prescribed is recognized as a risk factor for adverse effects. Education of patients under oral anticoagulation may improve quality and control of anticoagulant treatment; limitations of educational interventions include lack of assessment of patients' knowledge. Our goal was to determine the effect of an individualized educational intervention on knowledge of patients who recently started treatment with oral anticoagulants, to assess patients' knowledge, and to analyze factors associated with knowledge acquisition.

Testing a test: Analysis of the consistency of a pharmacology exam.

In higher education, learning variables are critical for professional activity and they should be properly assessed. Therefore, adequacy of evaluation instruments is very important. Consistency of an exam is one characteristic frequently studied to determine exam reliability.

[Medical schools: opportunities to improve drug prescription].

This paper reviews different strategies to improve medical prescription. Medical schools, responsible for the education and updating of physicians, should strengthen educative strategies, both curricular and extracurricular. They must also support managerial and regulatory strategies in collaboration with institutions that provide health services and governmental health ministries.