DRUGS AND THERAPEUTIC INFORMATION SERVICE PROVIDED BY CLINICAL PHARMACISTS FOR AN IMPROVED PATIENT CARE: AN EXPERIENCE FROM A TERTIARY CARE TEACHING HOSPITAL
Abstract
Objective: To assess the quality of drug information (DI) services provided by clinical pharmacists in a South Indian tertiary care teaching hospital.
Methods: All answered DI queries by the Department of Clinical Pharmacy are documented electronically. To assess the quality of DI services, a
quality assessment panel was constituted comprising the senior clinical pharmacists, and a quality assessment checklist was developed and applied
for assessing the quality of DI services.
Results: During the 12-month study period, a total of 1204 DI queries were received. The majority (48.76%) of DI queries was received during ward
rounds by the clinical pharmacists and among them 61% of the queries was for better patient care. The highest numbers of queries (48%) were
received from post-graduate medical students followed by the physicians (16%) and interns (8%). The most common DI queries were requested to
know the dosage/administration (22%), followed by cancer chemotherapy dosing (15.70%), adverse drug reactions (8%), drug use in pregnancy/
lactation (7.56%), and drug-drug interactions (6.48%). The highest number of queries were from Department of Medicine (26%) followed by Surgery
Department (19.35%), Department of Pediatrics (15.61%) and Department of Dermatology (8.47%). The majority of the queries were answered
immediately (64%). As per the quality assessment checklist, 64.5% queries were rated as excellent in quality followed by good (35.8%) and only 3.5%
DI queries were required improvement.
Conclusion: The quality of DI service was found satisfactory based on the rating.
Keywords: Drug Information, Quality Assurance, Clinical Pharmacists, Medicine Information
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