Activities, functions, and structure of pharmacy and therapeutics committees in large teaching hospitals

Structure and procedures of the pharmacy and therapeutic committees in Spanish hospitals

“…Similar to studies conducted in other countries [1][2][3][4][5][6][8][9][10][11] the very existence of the P&T Committees and Drug formularies is extended to all hospitals. However, it is a norm for Spanish hospitals to work on therapeutic interchange programmes and guidelines [2,16,17], which has been developed to help doctors to select the most appropriate medication, especially in the reconciliation of treatments.…”

“…Concerning the participation of pharmacists in these international studies, there are usually two or three pharmacists on average in the P&T Committees (UK [8], USA [1] and Canada [10,11]). The proportion of hospitals where the pharmacist is the P&T Committee secretary is similar to that of other countries such as the USA [1] and the Netherlands [3].…”

“…The evaluation and selection of drugs and the decision-making concerning their inclusion in Drug Formularies are carried out by Pharmacy and Therapeutic Committees (P&T Committees), which has been in operation for years in hospitals worldwide [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11], as well as in Spain.…”

Literature review on the structure and operation of Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committees

“…Nine analyzed the structure and operation of P&T Committees [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], while eight contained data on the factors that influence decisions made by P&T Committees [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21].…”

“…Committees usually include hospital pharmacists. In studies that provide the number of hospital pharmacists, the mean number is two or three (UK, USA, and Canada) [5,9,10]. The number of representatives segregated by hospital area was only measured in the Dutch study [11].…”