How aware the dental graduates of Kashmir are related to the pharmacology, drug reaction and efficacy of medicines they prescribe

Abstract

Pharmacology is the science of drugs, their pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and their use in the treatment of disease and as a dental health care professional we need to be fully aware of the art of rational drug prescription. A questionnaire based study was distributed amongst dental internes of Government Dental College, Srinagar Kashmir to study the need of knowledge of pharmacology, the disease forms in dental practice and the type of medication prescribed and was conducted on 48 interns and junior residents of the hospital. From the survey it was concluded that 38 percent of them regularly updated themselves on the newer drugs available in the market and knew about the dosage of each medicine while as 42% often read about the updates. Of them 38% preferred brand names and 54% were aware of the mode of action of the drugs that were prescribed by them and of them informed the patient about the possible side effects after prescribing the certain medications. It was concluded that the majority of the practitioner had good knowledge of the pharmacology of medicine they prescribed.