Abstract:Disclaimer
In an effort to expedite the publication of articles related to the COVID-19 pandemic, AJHP is posting these manuscripts online as soon as possible after acceptance. Accepted manuscripts have been peer-reviewed and copyedited, but are posted online before technical formatting and author proofing. These manuscripts are not the final version of record and will be replaced with the final article (formatted per AJHP style and proofed by the authors) at a later time.
… Show more
“…( Figure 1 ) describes the process of field hospital formulary development by Michigan Medicine pharmacy department. ( Bazzell et al, 2020 ) Figure 1 Field hospital formulary development process by Michigan Medicine pharmacy department. FEMA: Federal Emergency Management Agency …”
Introduction
(Background)
The role of pharmacists revolves around providing the highest levels of care to society and ensuring the provision of medicine to all patients. However, with the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID -19), pharmacists as a very important part of healthcare professionals’ team are responsible for fighting against the disease regardless of their setting of practice. The role of pharmacists will undergo a little change to extend and include other roles in order to ensure the safety of the community and limit the virus spread. Also, they will be required to obtain information from reliable sources, and to be up to date, so they can be reliable advisors to the community and raise their awareness.
Objectives
The purpose of this review is to highlight community and hospital pharmacists’ roles during (COVID-19) global pandemic, and to clearly illustrate how they are contributing to maintain pharmacy services continuity, supporting other healthcare professionals, and facilitating the patient’s education.
Summary
Clinical pharmacists provide direct patient care through monitoring adverse drug reactions, ensuring individualized treatment, performing evidence-based practice, and evaluating drugs in clinical trials. On the other hand, community pharmacists which are the most accessible healthcare providers by the community increase their awareness regarding the preventive measures, balance medicines supply and demand, provide drive-thru and home delivery services, offer telehealth counselling, psychological support, refer suspected COVID-19 patients, and provide vaccination when available.
Conclusion
Innovative pharmacists’ roles have emerged to adapt to changes during COVID-19 pandemic, however, they may be needed in the post COVID-19 world as well.
“…( Figure 1 ) describes the process of field hospital formulary development by Michigan Medicine pharmacy department. ( Bazzell et al, 2020 ) Figure 1 Field hospital formulary development process by Michigan Medicine pharmacy department. FEMA: Federal Emergency Management Agency …”
Introduction
(Background)
The role of pharmacists revolves around providing the highest levels of care to society and ensuring the provision of medicine to all patients. However, with the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID -19), pharmacists as a very important part of healthcare professionals’ team are responsible for fighting against the disease regardless of their setting of practice. The role of pharmacists will undergo a little change to extend and include other roles in order to ensure the safety of the community and limit the virus spread. Also, they will be required to obtain information from reliable sources, and to be up to date, so they can be reliable advisors to the community and raise their awareness.
Objectives
The purpose of this review is to highlight community and hospital pharmacists’ roles during (COVID-19) global pandemic, and to clearly illustrate how they are contributing to maintain pharmacy services continuity, supporting other healthcare professionals, and facilitating the patient’s education.
Summary
Clinical pharmacists provide direct patient care through monitoring adverse drug reactions, ensuring individualized treatment, performing evidence-based practice, and evaluating drugs in clinical trials. On the other hand, community pharmacists which are the most accessible healthcare providers by the community increase their awareness regarding the preventive measures, balance medicines supply and demand, provide drive-thru and home delivery services, offer telehealth counselling, psychological support, refer suspected COVID-19 patients, and provide vaccination when available.
Conclusion
Innovative pharmacists’ roles have emerged to adapt to changes during COVID-19 pandemic, however, they may be needed in the post COVID-19 world as well.
“…Clinical pharmacists are critical to the team delivering care to patients with COVID-19 58. Clinical pharmacists adapted and devised a limited formulary by assessing drug distribution workflow and current prescribing trends, which resulted in the establishment of efficient and effective medication distribution services in the field hospital 59. Tracking and remote follow-up systems for patients with COVID-19 must be developed and adapted to ensure that patients will continue to receive rehabilitative care and follow-up management practices 32 60.…”
ObjectivesCOVID-19 has strained healthcare systems, requiring the redesign of their structure, human resource management and clinical approach. Countries have adopted implementation strategies and maximise field hospital functionality to address the issue of overflow of patients with COVID-19. This scoping review was based on the main research question, ‘What are the implementation strategies, challenges and opportunities in managing the field hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic?’, and aimed to consolidate all recent evidence on COVID-19 field hospital implementation approaches, challenges and potentialities.DesignScoping review, following the Arksey and O’Malley’s framework, and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines.Data sourcesPubMed, Web of Science and Scopus were searched from 1 January 2020 through 31 December 2021.Eligibility criteriaOriginal articles, reviews, case studies and reports written in English were included. Works without full article and articles that did not answer the research questions were excluded.Data extraction and synthesisData were extracted using a standardised data extraction form in Microsoft Excel. The findings of all included articles were synthesised narratively.ResultsEighty-five records were reviewed and 25 studies were included. For the field hospital implementation strategies, ‘surge capacity’, namely space, human resource, supply and system, was discussed in addition to the preparation and workflow of other services such as pharmacy, rehabilitation, food and nutrition. The management of COVID-19 field hospitals is challenging with respect to staff and resource shortages, inability to anticipate patient load and poor communication. The opportunities and recommendations for improvement of management were also highlighted.ConclusionsThe compilation of lessons learnt may help improve the future management of field hospitals, administratively and clinically.
“…This has been portrayed through the opening and operation of hospital-based pharmacy services at COVID-19 field hospitals. 5 - 7 Although pharmacy operations at field hospitals have previously been discussed, there is a paucity of data pertaining to objective markers of pharmacist interventions in this setting.…”
Section: The Call To Action: Clinical Pharmacist Presence In a Covid-...mentioning
The second wave of COVID-19 emerged in the late fall months in the state of Massachusetts and inadvertently caused a rise in the number of cases requiring hospitalization. With a field hospital previously opened in central Massachusetts during the Spring of 2020, the governor decided to reimplement the field hospital. Although operations were effectively accomplished during the first wave, the reimplementation of the field hospital came with its new set of challenges for operating a satellite pharmacy. Experiences gathered include new pharmacy operation workflows, the clinical role of pharmacy services, introduction of remdesivir treatment, and pharmacy involvement in newly diagnosed diabetes patients requiring insulin teaching. Pharmacy services were successful in adapting to the rapidly growing number in patients with a total of over 600 patients served in a course of 2 months.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
