Ability among pharmacy students of University Science of Malaysia (USM) to identify potential drug-drug interactions among anti-diabetic drugs / Fadilah Diyana Mohamad Isa

Introduction:Rising in the number of concomitant medications will greatly increase the risks of drug-drug interactions (DDis). Diabetes mellitus (DM) has become the worrisome issue among the health care members. Patients who are ailing with T2DM for instance, at elevated risks of getting other chronic health problems like hypertension, stroke and hyperlipidaemia. Those patients are provided with various types of medications. They are more vulnerable to polypharmacy. So one of the purposes for this study to evaluate the ability of third year and fourth year pharmacy students' to identify the drug-drug interactions involving anti-diabetic agents. Methods: Descriptive cross-sectional study and had been done in that involved l 25students comprise of third year and fourth year pharmacy students from University of Science Malaysia (USM). One of the important parts of the questionnaire was 20 questions to test them on the understanding of basic pharmacology involving drug-drug interactions (DDis) and their ability to determine severity of drug pairs through true and false selection. Results: About 44% of the participants that consist of 39 third year students and 16 fourth year students were considered as having adequate knowledge on DDls involving anti-diabetic medications. Another 56% of the participants consist of 35 students from each year showed opposite result. The passing marks of the students were 15 over 20. The findings also showed that there were significant difference between the students previous education and time spent on their DDis classes with their knowledge ranking