Quality Control in Pharmaceutical Care: Guidelines and Protocols

Abstract

Pharmacy practice guidelines are essential to describe pharmacy care structures and processes at the best evidence available. Guideline development is a laborious procedure that should be well organized and structured by a professional instance with the means to manage revisions and to support implementation in daily practice. During guideline development, practicing pharmacists should be involved as well as patients, other healthcare professions involved in the topic, the healthcare inspectorate, and health insurance companies as external stakeholders. Validated tools are available to grade existing evidence during the formulation of guideline recommendations (“GRADE”). Checklists with acknowledged criteria (AGREE II) can be used to optimize the guideline development process and to appraise guideline quality. Beside guideline development continuous effort must be made for broad guideline implementation in daily practice. This can be done in pilot settings with critical feedback for an update of the guideline recommendations. E health applications may be available to be used in the near future. Additionally, indicators can be used to collect information on the implementation of meaningful aspects and to monitor the progress during time (see Chap. 10).