Proposal for a New Tool to Evaluate Clinical Pharmacy Practice Based on the Percentage of Pharmaceutical Interventions that Influence Medical Treatments

Abstract

Clinical pharmacy practice needs quality safeguards and proper evaluation to ensure good performance of hospital pharmacists. We propose a method for evaluating performance using the indicator of whether pharmaceutical interventions conducted in clinical practice aŠect the treatment carried out by the physician. To illustrate the usefulness of this method, we report one example of the response of a physician to our clinical practice. Weˆrst designed a worksheet on which information related to pharmaceutical interventions would be recorded. The worksheet included sections for the details of the pharmaceutical intervention, whether decisions about interventions were active (pharmacists' decisions) or passive (requests from the physician), the timing of the intervention (before or after prescription), the grounds for the intervention, and whether it had any in‰uence on the treatment, as well as a detailed record of the course of the intervention. These worksheets were used to record pharmaceutical interventions from July to December 2005. During that period, a total of 347 pharmaceutical interventions for 164 patients were recorded. Each intervention was examined from the diŠerent perspectives of type of intervention, timing (before or after prescription was issued), and reason for the intervention. Overall, it was found that 91.6％ of all interventions had some in‰uence on treatment. Because numerical results can be obtained with this method, it has the beneˆt of being an objective means of evaluating the contribution of pharmaceutical services. Furthermore, the validity of even those interventions that had no in‰uence on treatment can be examined using medical and pharmaceuticalˆndings and may improve the quality of pharmacists.

Economic contributions of pharmaceutical interventions by pharmacists: a retrospective report in Japan

“…In preventing drug-related adverse events, the hospital pharmacist acts as a risk manager for hospitalized patients. Furthermore, the pharmaceutical evidence-based interventions of pharmacists play a useful role in medical treatment [ 8 , 9 ]. A ward-based pharmaceutical service was introduced as a medical treatment bonus after fiscal 2012 in Japan; since then, the role of the pharmacist in hospital wards has expanded.…”

Differences in Pharmaceutical Intervention Triggers for the Optimization of Medication by Patient Age: A University Hospital Study

“…Analysis of PreAVOID Reports Pharmaceutical intervention for inpatients reported from April 2013 to March 2019 were extracted from the HUH's electronic medical records. PreAVOID reports were classified by patient age (0-14, 15-39, 40-64, 65-74, >75 years), triggers (medication history, clinical symptoms, laboratory results, blood drug concentration, patient's complaint) 18) and outcome of pharmacists' intervention (reduced drug dosage, drug discontinuation, increased drug dosage, switched drug, additional drug started, etc. ), 19) and subsequently analyzed.…”