To improve prescription practices among the country's medical graduates, the Indian Council of Medical Research launched a free online course on September 17 on the occasion of World Patient Safety Day.

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The course on 'Prescribing Skills for Indian Medical Graduates' will be run by the National Institute of Epidemiology (NIE-ICMR), Chennai, the ICMR said in a statement. Launching the course, Prof Balram Bhargava, secretary, Department of Health Research (DHR) and director general, ICMR, said, "ICMR is committed to ensuring that the country's medical graduates are at par with their international counterparts. The Council, through its institute ICMR-NIE has successfully completed a basic course in Biomedical Research. "The course has now been made compulsory for postgraduates by the Medical Council of India. Building on the success, we will ensure that this digital course on Prescribing Skills for Indian Medical Graduates is effective."

Dr. Rajni Kaul, course coordinator, ICMR, informed that the course was guided by Technical Advisory Group (TAG) set up by the ICMR. Dr V P Kamboj, chairman, TAG, said, "The need and importance of the program were felt by Prof Balram Bhargava." Subsequently, this was undertaken based on the feedback received from the medical fraternity regarding prescription errors, he said. Expert faculty members in clinical pharmacology and medicine from ICMR-NVCCP (National Virtual Centre of Clinical Pharmacology) network have developed this course for medical graduates covering topics relevant to India's health problems.

Dr. Nilima Kshirsagar, a leading expert, stated the course deals with various dos and don'ts of prescribing medicines and how to administer drugs and communicate instructions to patients, among other things. It constitutes 40 video lectures of 20 minutes each to be taken online over a period of three months at the learner's pace. It also involves a pre-test to evaluate participants' prior knowledge. A certificate of participation will be given on completion of the course. Interns are expected to register now and appear for the pre-test on October 4, or October 11, the statement said. Medical graduates will have access to the course from October 12 and it closes on December 30.

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