A study of pharmacist intervention in patient care at institutional and community pharmacies [abstract]

ABSTRACT

The objectives of the study are (1) To demonstrate the various types of pharmacist therapuetic interventions encountered in institutional and community pharmacies in Trinidad. (2) To identify the prevalent drug-related problems in therapeutic interventions. (3) To investigate the use of a more detailed form to document intervention in the provision of pharmaceutical care. The study used a detailed form to record the therapeutic interventions. It was conducted over a three-month period. The collected data were transcribed to a Patient Care Intervention (PCI) form with relevant categories for drug-related problems. It was analyzed and presented as frequencies on graphs and tables. From a total of 289 interventions, 174 interventions were collected from an institutional pharmacy and 115 from community pharmacies. Nineteen percent of the interventions were due to unclear instructions or no instructions to the patients, of which 92 percent were from the community pharmacies; 17 percent accounted for dosing problems where excessive was 9 percent and sub-therapeutic 8 percent; 6.9 percent were due to wrong choice of drug or dosage form. Others accounted for 55 percent of the interventions of which 92 percent were due to out-of-stock medications. The study showed that there is a variety of significant drug-related problems on prescribing. It highlighted the need for pharmacist intervention, thorough documentation of the interventions, effective pharmacist-physician communication and improved inventory management in order to achieve positive outcomes of patient medication therapy. Due to the limitations of the study, it is recommended that a further study should be done and it should include the pharmacoeconomic aspect of the interventions. (AU)