Patient care round led by pharmacist in Emergency Department – Innovative experience

Abstract

Background: As part of improving the service in ED, we conduct Pharmacist-led Pharmacy round (PLPR) led by Pharmacist to ensure best patient care is provided by pharmacist. Objective: No such experience was reported in the literature up to our knowledge so we decided to describe our experience, in the successful establishment of PLPR in ED and to identify whether implementing a pharmacy based round, provide better patients care in terms of finding more drug related problems and providing educations to all clinical pharmacists. Methods: The PLPR started daily at 11 am by brief meeting to discuss any pharmacy related issue then the PRPR team start rounding according to a planned schedule. The PLPR often involves ED pharmacists of different levels of experience the ED pharmacy specialist, clinical pharmacists who have reviewed the patient's case, pharmacy fellows and medical and pharmacy students. During the round, the pharmacist assigned for the area present each case using the Care Plan Form (CPF) to review the suggested recommendations or interventions, further recommendations to the clinical pharmacist may be given if necessary. The extra recommendations or discussion (ERD) conducted during the PLPR are documented and analyzed to evaluate the impact of the pharmacy based round. For each intervention, the following data were documented: date, time, medication, types of intervention. Results: A total of seventy five ERD were documented during this period. Interventions related to adding, initiating or selecting drug therapy were the most common performed 58 (77%), pharmacotherapy options were the second most common interventions done by the team 13 (17.3%), requesting laboratory tests to optimize pharmacotherapy management were made 7 (9%) followed by dosage adjustment 6 (8%). Conclusion: Implementation of PLPR is an initiative to improve pharmaceutical care in ED and training among Clinical pharmacist at point of care.