Pharmacist authorship on clinical practice guidelines

Abstract

IntroductionThe National Academy of Medicine (NAM; formerly the Institute of Medicine) recommends multidisciplinary authorship as a standard for developing trustworthy guideline panels. The purpose of this study is to describe pharmacist authorship on clinical practice guideline (CPG) expert panels.MethodsGuidelines published between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2016 and were available in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality National Guideline Clearinghouse database were eligible for study inclusion. Only guidelines with pharmacotherapeutic recommendations were included. The primary end point was the proportion of pharmacist authorship on national CPGs. Pharmacist authorship by specialty area and characteristics of pharmacist authors were described.ResultsOf the 143 guidelines included, 58 (40.6%) had at least one pharmacist author. Guidelines developed by the Veterans Affairs/Department of Defense (VA/DoD; n = 7) and the Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium (CPIC; n = 13) always included at least one pharmacist. Excluding VA/DoD and CPIC guidelines, the proportion of pharmacist authorship was 30.9% (38/123). A pharmacist served as the first, senior, and/or corresponding author on 19% (27/143) of CPGs. There were 1919 total authors with an average of 13.4 (+7.4) authors per guideline. Pharmacists represented 6.8% (130/1919) of all authors, and 83 were unique pharmacist authors. Critical care, emergency medicine, and adult internal medicine guidelines had the largest proportion of pharmacist authorship, while oncology and pediatric guidelines had the smallest. Pharmacy organizations sponsored or endorsed 5.2% (3/58) of CPGs with a pharmacist author.ConclusionThe majority of CPGs in this cohort did not include a pharmacist in the authorship and when included, was often limited to a single pharmacist. It is imperative for pharmacy organizations to collaborate with sponsoring medical organizations and position clinical pharmacists to serve as expert members on CPGs consistent with NAM recommendations.