Integration Of The Pharmacist : Improving Health Outcomes

Pharmacists are part of the patient care team, responsible for overseeing the best, safe, and management cost on medication therapy using evidenced of medicine to improve patient care in all patients. Medical staff and other team are depending on pharmacists on their knowledge of drugs and collaborative practice. In larger hospital there are pharmacists on different floors and opportunity to interact with other. Hospital pharmacists gather with multidisciplinary team to help improve therapy by providing clinical services to patients. Let see how pharmacist’s role in the hospital setting and a scenario where the pharmacist’s involvement make an impact on health facility, medical team, and patient. To begin with, I will talk about pharmacist’s

As future pharmacists, we are going to face with not only the medications but also the patients, which the former ones are our tools while the latter ones are the people we use correct tools to care about. We are required to combine our pharmacy knowledge among medications with patients’ different health conditions to create the patient-centered care and provide the best outcomes. However, this care trend is in transition now, from professional-orientated to patient-centered.

During the two and a half years of my pharmacy journey, I have been thinking what can a pharmacist do within the healthcare interprofessional team to better help the patients in order to achieve the best health outcome. I work in a clinic as well as inpatient pharmacy, additionally, I had my rotations at CVS and Regions Hospital. all these experiences shape my version of the pharmacists at different settings. Therefore, in various pharmacy settings, pharmacists can work differently with the whole healthcare team. The recent PED-Rx events inspired me how important pharmacists can play roles in when working in a team.

The contribution of pharmacists in a clinical setting and community pharmacy is significant that the workforce benefit from. When the workforce understands their medications and complies with the prescribed treatment plans the work center becomes healthy and the potential of increased productivity becomes a realistic and profitable proposition for the organization. When the workforce takes advantage of the healthcare services the pharmacists provide in a community and clinical pharmacies productivity and profit are at high potential reality.

Currently, more responsibilities are being given to the pharmacy technician that were traditionally performed by pharmacists, such as clarifying prescriptions and entering orders. With these additional responsibilities for the pharmacy technician, this will allow the pharmacist to spend additional time with patients. However, with these additional responsibilities enables more opportunities for error. In 2008, a study was performed at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital, a 178 bed acute care facility

It is the nurse’s and pharmacist’s job to be cautious and aware of every medication they are administering by using their critical thinking skills and applying what they know to every situation. Although it is important for these individuals to be able to advocate for their patients, it also imperative that prescribers be aware of the impact they have on their patients as their actions have a domino effect. In conclusion, it is not the responsibility of a single profession to maintain safety in medication administration. It is the responsibility of everyone involved in the patient’s care. Each person who takes steps to improve the process and promote the patient as the number one priority is doing their part in refining how the healthcare system views medication

One of the most important responsibilities of a pharmacist—whether in a hospital or community setting—is to help people. I was able to observe this critical factor portrayed by my clinical instructors at both St. Francis and at Walgreens. All the pharmacists I worked with during those two weeks displayed a genuine desire to improve their patients’ quality of life by ensuring no drug-drug interactions were present and asking questions about medication histories. I felt humbled and gratified being able to contribute in a minor way when providing

Counseling patients is extremely important; it allows pharmacists with the opportunity to better understand the health status of their patients. If a patient doesn’t know what, why or how to take their medication. We are the ones who help educate them. Better informed patients equates to better overall healthcare. If they are more medically literate before seeking our help, we can better assist them. As they begin to inquire more, it pushes health care providers to be more conscientious of their tasks. Greater care and consideration is taken when our patients can also hold us accountable. Encouraging patients to reach out with concerns or comments will benefit the pharmacist patient care process. For example, if the patient was able to identify that the drug name, though similar, were blatantly incorrect and brought it to the attention of her pharmacist they could have fixed it before the patient walked out the

For the past 6 years, I have been working as a full time Certified Pharmacy Technician (CPhT) for a retail pharmacy chain, and over that 6 years something has slowly become very apparent to me with the patients who walk through our doors to fill prescriptions. A lot of them have gone from people who responsibly took their medications with no problems, to people who now seem to be struggling with properly taking their medication. The sad truth is most of them don’t know they are using medications wrong but their doctors have continued writing prescriptions for them anyway. Luckily most of the time it is for prescription antibiotics (medications the help fight bacterial

Medication Therapy Management (MTM) refers to a pharmacy management drug benefit program for patients with multiple chronic conditions, high drug costs, and high healthcare utilization. MTM was initially designed to optimize health outcomes, thereby reducing adverse drug events (Lau, Briesacher, Touchette, Stubbings, & Ng, 2011; Pindolia et al., 2009). The goal is to enhance effectiveness, safety, and medication compliance (Isetts et al., 2006). Since inception, various forms of MTM programs existed with pharmacists providing services for medically complex patients ranging from medication reconciliation, assessing medication-related problems, providing education, to developing personalized comprehensive medication lists through face-to-face, telephone, or other technological approaches (Isetts et al., 2006).

This article talks about human errors in dispensing drugs. Adverse drug reactions have reportedly claimed more than 100,000 lives in America. Pharmacy mistakes may have contributed to the deaths as a result. Studies uncovered that these human errors were mainly caused by distractions and interruptions. Other contributing factors include long working hours, heavy workloads, complicated procedures, misinterpretation and work stress. Pharmacists were generally asked to handle a huge amount of tasks within a short span of time. The tasks include reviewing patient’s profile, verifying with patient for any drug allergies, dispensing drugs and counseling for new drugs. Studies have also shown that over the years, the demands for prescriptive drugs

In regards to the survey information the hospitals gathered, many of the hospitals shared the same strengths and weaknesses, with a few notable exceptions. Areas that were consistently low throughout all the hospitals were cleanliness of the hospital as well as noise level, an aspect which pharmacists do not have control over. An area in which they do have control over is if a patient’s medications are explained to them, which was a weakness of a majority of the hospitals. An area where the hospitals showed a collective strength was communication with doctors and nurses. A synergistic relationship between nurses, doctors and pharmacists will change this weakness of medication education to a strength.

Medication Therapy Management (MTM) services were provided by community and hospital pharmacists at twelve community pharmacy locations in Asheville, NC. In addition, a professional asthma educator provided services at the Mission Hospitals’ Health Education Center

Where there is a shortfall in GP and nurse numbers, pharmacists occupy a unique position to offer support. GP-pharmacist collaboration can provide more patient-centric care, provide a more holistic approach to care and reduce prescribing and downstream care costs.

One of the medical professionals that is often neglected in major discussions about medical liability and ethics is the pharmacist. Many people think that the modern pharmacist needs little training because everything is computerized; cross-checked, and requires little in the way of personalized, or intellectual, expertise. Nothing could be further from the actual truth, and the dilemma faced in the increasingly competitive world of pharmacy sales means that many