Characteristics of drug-related problems discussed by hospital pharmacists in multidisciplinary teams

Abstract

The majority of patients had one or more DRPs. The problems identified as DRPs by the pharmacists were accepted as such by the physicians and to a high degree acted upon. Both clinical significance of the DRP and patient characteristics influenced physician immediate acceptance rate. Some DRPs could be solved by direct contact with nurses or the patients. Awareness of DRPs increases through participation of pharmacists in the multidisciplinary therapeutic hospital team.

Drug-related problems identification in general internal medicine: The impact and role of the clinical pharmacist and pharmacologist

“…The majority of the patients was polymorbid and was polymedicated, as 94% received at least five drugs. These observations are consistent with studies concerning DRP detection in internal medicine wards, predominantly involving polymorbid and polymedicated patients [13,29,30].…”

Use of renal risk drugs in patients with renal impairment

“…Therefore, we were not able to give more specific advice than to prioritise patients with severe RI and several drugs for medication reviews. The physicians' acceptance rate of the clinical pharmacist's interventions in this study was higher than in previous studies [12,13,25,26]. The physicians agreed to as much as 95.7 % of the pharmacist's recommendations, of which almost 3/4 resulted in immediate changes.…”

In-hospital medication reviews reduce unidentified drug-related problems

“…In our study, an average of 9.8 (median 9) M-DRPs were identified per patient in the intervention group. This was more than three times higher than the number of identified DRPs in other studies conducted in medical wards: Blix et al [24] [28] (82.4 %), but is higher than those of Mannheimer et al [25] (63 %).…”

“…In our study, and other studies with comparable acceptance rates, medication reviews were conducted in close liaison with the physician in charge, enabling mutual handling and understanding of the DRPs. Other factors shown to influence acceptance rates include ward type, pharmacist experience, total time spent on the ward by the pharmacist [26], patient characteristics and clinical significance of the DRPs addressed [24].…”