A context-learning pharmacotherapy program for preclinical medical students leads to more rational drug prescribing during their clinical clerkship in internal medicine.

The irrational prescribing of drugs seems to be a general problem in medical practice, occasionally leading to serious consequences. In order to improve the drug prescribing performance of medical students, a compulsory context-learning pharmacotherapy module was implemented in 1998 in the medical curriculum of 2nd-4th-year medical students at theVU University Medical Center (VUmc), Amsterdam, The Netherlands. As part of this program, preclinical medical students are taught how to select, prescribe, and evaluate a drug regimen rationally.