To the Editor: We are pleased that Simpson and colleagues brought the important matter of drug-dose calculation skills among Australian hospital doctors to the attention of the wider medical community.1 Data similar to theirs, suggesting inadequate calculation skills, have been reported from the United Kingdom and Germany.2-4 As teachers in the MB BS course of the University of Adelaide, we have been concerned with deficiencies in the clinical numeracy skills of our students for some time. Such deficiencies among medical students have been reported from North Carolina,5 but to our knowledge no information has been available about Australian medical students.
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- University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA.
- 1. Simpson CM, Keijzers GB, Lind JF. A survey of drug-dose calculation skills of Australian tertiary hospital doctors. Med J Aust 2009; 190: 117-120. <MJA full text>
- 2. Wirtz V, Taxis K, Barber N. An observational study of intravenous medication errors in the United Kingdom and in Germany. Pharm World Sci 2003; 25: 104-111.
- 3. Wheeler DW, Remoundos DD, Whittlestone KD, et al. Doctors’ confusion over ratios and percentages in drug solutions: the case for standard labeling. J R Soc Med 2004; 97: 380-383.
- 4. Wheeler DW, Wheeler SJ, Ringrose TR. Factors influencing doctors’ ability to calculate drug doses correctly. Int J Clin Pract 2007; 61: 189-194.
- 5. Sheridan SL, Pignone L. Numeracy and the medical student’s ability to interpret data. Eff Clin Pract 2002; 5: 35-40.
- 6. Australian Council for Educational Research. Australia’s performance in TIMSS 2007. http://www.acer.edu.au/timss/results.html (accessed Mar 2009).