Australian dental students' knowledge on antibiotics prophylaxis for dental procedures.

BACKGROUND: Prescribing medicine is integral to clinical dentistry. Infective endocarditis may be rare but fatal if left untreated. As a result, judicious prescribing of antibiotics should be implemented due to potential. To our knowledge, no Australian study has examined dental students' knowledge and perceptions about antibiotic prophylaxis for dental procedures. METHODS: Australian dental students were invited to undertake the survey comprising case vignettes to investigate their medication knowledge. A total of 117 responses were received. The questions were 12 clinically relevant questions and three perception-based questions. Results were analysed using descriptive statistics as well as the chi-squared test. RESULTS: The 117 respondents had a mean correct response of 7.34 ± 2.64 (range 3-12 out of 12). Out of 117 students, 89 (76%) answered more than half of the questions correctly. Only three students (3%) answered all the questions correctly. Nearly two-thirds felt that they knew about antibiotic prophylaxis used for dental procedures. CONCLUSION: Most respondents answered more than half, but not all, of the clinical questions correctly. It is crucial to highlight that dental student may never receive any more training on antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) at any point in their future careers. It may be ideal that this issue is addressed at the dental school. One way to target this is to potentially nationalised teaching delivery of dental AMS across Australia.

Australian community pharmacists' ability to identify the indications for dental prescriptions-a case vignette study.

OBJECTIVES: Pharmacists are known as medicine experts. Dentists can independently prescribe and administer medications related to dental conditions such as antimicrobials, anti-inflammatories and analgesics. However, little is known about pharmacists' knowledge and perceptions of medicines prescribed for dentistry. Therefore, this study aimed to assess community pharmacists' ability to identify the indications for dental prescriptions using hypothetical vignettes. METHODS: Australian community pharmacists were invited through email and social media to undertake a web-based questionnaire consisting of nine case vignettes of dental prescriptions and their indicated uses in dental settings and two perception-based questions. The results were provided as a percentage of the correct answers to the case vignettes. In addition, Pearson chi-square tests were performed to examine associations between categorical variables. KEY FINDINGS: Of the 202 pharmacists who completed the questionnaire, the mean number of correct responses was 5 ± 2 (out of 9). More than three-quarters (78.5%) of pharmacists believed that thorough knowledge of prescriptions for dental ailments was necessary for safe and effective community pharmacy practice. In addition, nearly two-thirds (64.1%) felt confident that they could dispense medicines indicated for dental conditions safely and effectively. CONCLUSIONS: The knowledge demonstrated by participants through correct identification of the indications for dental prescription was less than optimal. Professional development courses for pharmacists in dental ailments could prove beneficial.

Dispensing patterns of medicines prescribed by Australian dentists from 2006 to 2018 - a pharmacoepidemiological study.

OBJECTIVES: Dentists are independent prescribers that can prescribe subsidised medicines under the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). It is hypothesised that increased dental prescribing can partly be accounted for by the growth in both the Australian population and the number of practising dentists. This pharmacoepidemiological study aims to determine the dispensing patterns of medications amongst dentists and to identify trends over time. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data on dental medications under PBS from 2006 to 2018 were accessed. All the dentist-prescribed concessional medicines dispensed at pharmacies in 2018 were included for time trend analysis. Cumulative dispensing counts and defined daily dose (DDD) per 1,000 concessional population days (DPD) were analysed for time trend analysis. RESULTS: Out of the 56 medications within the dental PBS schedule, the top 20 medicines had a total cumulative dispensing count of 5,058,556, which accounts for 97.4% of the total dispensing count. Eleven out of 20 medicines were antibiotics. Overall, increases were observed for seven out of 20 medicines (amoxicillin + clavulanic acid, clindamycin, ibuprofen, diazepam, oxycodone, tramadol, naproxen) in both dispensing count and trend, as expressed per DPD. CONCLUSION: This study highlights the increasing dispensing pattern and trends of dentist-prescribed antibiotics, opioids and benzodiazepines. Further investigation may be required to determine whether the medicine use is appropriate. In the future, this could provide new educational opportunities on the appropriate use of medicines for dentists.