Our study showed a high prevalence of PIMs use, which is associated with various clinical and social-demographic factors. When comparing both criteria through McNemar's test, PIMs use was considered different. The differences may have occurred because medications with high prevalence of use in Brazil were included in Beers criteria 2012 .

BackgroundThis study aims to describe the distribution of the hospital pharmacy workforce in Brazil.MethodsData were acquired, during 2016, through the Brazilian National Database of Healthcare Facilities (CNES). The following variables were extracted: hospital name, registry number, telephone, e-mail, state, type of institution, subtype, management nature, ownership, presence of research/teaching activities, complexity level, number of hospital beds, presence of pharmacists, number of pharmacists, pharmacist specialization. All statistical analyses were performed by IBM SPSS v.19.ResultsThe number of hospitals with a complete registry in the national database was 4790. The majority were general hospitals (77.9%), managed by municipalities (66.1%), under public administration (44.0%), had no research/teaching activities (90.5%), classified as medium complexity (71.6%), and had no pharmacist in their team (50.6%). Furthermore, almost 60.0% of hospitals did not comply with the minimum recommendations of having a pharmacist per 50 hospital beds. The Southeast region had the highest prevalence of pharmacists, with 64.4% of hospitals having a pharmaceutical professional. This may have occurred as this region had the highest population to hospital ratio. Non-profit hospitals were more likely to have pharmacists compared to those under public administration and private hospitals.ConclusionThis study mapped the hospital pharmacy workforce in Brazil, showing a higher prevalence of hospital pharmacists in the Southeast region, and in non-profit specialized hospitals.

It was observed a great diversity among rates of adherence and/or discontinuation of hormonal therapy for breast cancer, which may be due to a lack of methodology standardization. Therefore, adequate and validated methods to ensure reliability of the results and allow comparison in the literature are needed. Furthermore, adherence decreases and discontinuation increases over time, suggesting the need for patient continuous education and a pharmacotherapeutic follow up by health professionals to improve these clinical outcomes.