Quality Assurance of Drug Information Service and Drug Therapy Review Provided by Clinical Pharmacists in an Indian Teaching Hospital

Abstract

Background: To ensure the competent delivery of patient care by clinical pharmacists, it is essential to evaluate services provided by them. Objectives: This study was conducted to assess the impact of Standard operating procedure (SOP) on quality of Drug information (DI) service and drug therapy review provided by clinical pharmacy department. Methods: The study was conducted at department of clinical pharmacy located at tertiary care teaching hospital. Quality assessment checklist was designed to assess the quality of both services. Based on score obtained from checklist each service was graded at different levels. Quality of services provided was compared before and after implementation of SOP. Also questionnaire was circulated among health care professionals of various medical departments to evaluate their perception and opinion about mentioned services provided. Results: Before implementation of SOP, out of 70 DI evaluated, 35.7% of them were found to be excellent, 41.4% of them were found to be good, whereas it was found that 22.9% of DI needed improvement.After implementation of SOP, out of 85 DI evaluated, 82.4% of DI provided was found to be excellent and remaining DI provided (17.6%) was found to be good. Before implementation of SOP, out of 64 interventions provided, 65.6% of them were found to be excellent and 26.6% of them were found to be good, however, 7.8% of them needed improvement. After implementation of SOP, 64 interventions were evaluated and out of which 87.5% of them were found to be excellent and 7.8% of them were found to be good. However, only 4.7% of them needed improvement. Majority of medical staff (77%) felt that clinical pharmacists actively contribute in drug therapy decision making and overall performance of clinical pharmacist was rated as "Good" by medical staff. Conclusion: The quality of both, DI service and drug therapy review was found to be improved after implementation of SOPs. Also, quality of both services provided is an important factor influencing the acceptability of clinical pharmacist's contributions.

Assessment and evaluation of drug information services provided by drug information centre at a multispecialty hospital in Erode, Tamil Nadu, India

“…But Mahendrakumar BJ et al, and Himanshu P et al, conducted a study showed that maximum numbers of queries were on dosage and administration. 12,13 180 85…”

Assessment of Pharmacists-led Drug Information Service in a Tertiary Care Hospital in India

“…Patel et al 6 performed quality assurance of drug information service and drug therapy review without any external expert in the panel. However, checklist of quality assurance of clinical pharmacy service was similar to present study.…”

“…Therefore, it is very important to procure accurate unbiased information. In India, irrational use of drugs is common and this has led to antibiotic resistance, adverse drug reactions, drug interactions and other drug related problems [3][4][5][6] . Among the many factors that make clinicians unable to update their knowledge about drugs, lack of unbiased drug information, availability of more than 60,000 formulations and lack of time are few notable reasons which ultimately lead to an increasing demand for independent, specific and unbiased drug information for better patient care [7][8][9] .…”

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“…Interventions: Ensuring the competent delivery of patient care by clinical pharmacists towards the patients was scarcely acquired and it paramount the most to evaluate services provided by them regarding the awareness about the predisposing factors of the diseases 3 . Findings suggest that endemic infectious and non-infectious disease research publications that explicitly or implicitly incorporate social epidemiological approaches have stagnated in recent years 4 .…”

“…Epidemiological studies have played an important part in the elucidation of predisposing factors for COPD, CKD, acute pancreatitis and CLD and opportunities for prevention and treatment 2 . The present study is designed retrospectively to focus on prevalence of various COPD, CKD, acute pancreatitis and CLD and causes of mortality in patients admitted to respective speciality units 3 .…”