Update on Safer Prescribing in Dentistry

Course Information

Prescribing is a complex task requiring a wide range of skills, from information gathering and risk management, knowledge of pharmacology and therapeutics, clinical decision-making, to communication and cooperation with others in the team and understanding the commercial, regulatory and legal requirements. Despite dentists being the second largest prescriber group in Australia, most dentists report having little or no formal education on how to prescribe. It tends to be a skill picked up ‘on the fly’ under the tutelage of senior staff in a workplace. This not a safe way to learn such an important and potentially dangerous skill, especially considering the high-risk medicines dentists can prescribe. This one-day seminar will provide a structured overview of the foundation skills required to be a competent and safe prescriber in contemporary health care. Particular attention will be paid to the cognitive steps leading up to the act of prescribing including medication history-taking. Topics focus on high-risk situations such as the very young, older people, pregnancy, and breastfeeding and ‘polypharmacy’. Complex medical patients with comorbidities such as cardiovascular and autoimmune disease, kidney and liver impairment will also be discussed. Case studies will address error-prone situations such as dose calculations, look-alike-sound-alike drugs, drug interactions, unsafe abbreviations, and prescribing under time constraints, focussing on prevention of prescribing errors and patient safety.