Health Professions Students and Faculty Perceptions of Poisoning Severity

Poisoning

Inaccurate perceptions of the severity of an exposure may result in unnecessary visits to the Emergency Department or Health Care Facility which can result in crowding of Emergency Departments, unnecessary utilization of valuable health care resources, unnecessary treatments, and or mistakes / errors resulting in harm to the patient. Inaccurate perceptions about the severity of an exposure can result in delays in proper evaluation and treatment resulting in harm or in some cases death of the patient.

Consumers and health professionals are often surprised about the toxicity (or lack of toxicity) after exposure to a number of pharmaceutical or non-pharmaceutical agents. Past experience with the survey used in this study has indicated that consumers and health professional perform about the same. Most individuals answer less than 50% of questions incorrectly. Pharmacy students will be asked to participate in a short (5-7 minutes) survey (see below) that contains 21-short cases involving an exposure to a pharmaceutical or non-pharmaceutical agent. All cases involve children less than 19 years of age. Participants will be asked to indicate their year in pharmacy school (1st or 2nd) and their gender (f/m). The survey will be given after a scheduled examination or other classroom activity and will not involve class time. Students will be provided a link to an online version of the survey. Conclusions will be derived through the analysis of the data. At a later date, all students in the class (whether they participated in the survey or not)students will be provided a link to video that describes the correct answers to each of the cases and an explanation.

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