Pharmacist Compliance Report

Goal three by the National Patient Safety Goal for 2014 is to use medicines safely. Many errors occur regularly with medications which is why communication is so important with the doctors, nurses and patients. One process that Joint Commission requires in accredited HCO’s is medication reconciliation “creating the most accurate list possible off all medications a patient is taking, including drug name, dosage, frequency, and route, and comparing that list against the physician’s admission, transfer, and/or discharge orders with the goal of providing correct medications to the patients at all transition points within the hospital (Finkelman & Kenner, 2012, p. 388)”. Ensuring medication reconciliation to the patient, health providers and any new consults that are

The purpose of this paper is to bring forth awareness when it comes to patients and medication errors and further educates health care professionals on the importance of communication especially during transition of care. According to Williams and Ashrcoft (2013) “ An estimated median of 19.1 % of total opportunities for error in hospitals.” Although not all medication errors occur during transition it is the time most prevalent for these errors to occur. As per Johnson, Guirguis, and Grace (2015) “An estimated 60% of all medication errors occur during transition of care. The National Transitions of Care Coalition defines a transition of care as the movement of patients between healthcare locations, providers, or different levels of care within the same location as their conditions and care needs change, [and] frequently involves multiple persons, including the patient, the family member or other caregiver(s), nurse(s), social worker(s), case manager(s), pharmacist(s), physician(s), and other providers.”

As expert on drugs, it is the responsibility of pharmacist to make drug related intervention when necessary. When on rounds, the rest of the team ask drug related questions from the pharmacist and expect the pharmacist to make recommendations especially on antibiotics stewardship, renal dosing, pharmacokinetics, and pain management. While on rounds, I witnessed pharmacist answer to such call. With less than a year of classes left before I start my APPE, I hope to consolidate on my previous pharmacotherapy knowledge and make valuable improvement in my problem solving skills and critical thinking

What does it take to be a pharmacist? Pharmacy involves more than just handing out drugs, otherwise anyone could do it. “A pharmacist is a health professional who follows instruction from physicians regarding the amount of education to distribute” (“Pharmacy requirements”). The pharmacy profession requires a lot of education, demands patience and attentive work, provides good pay, and offers a satisfying job.

Limitations of dispensing without counseling and how it leads to medication error The main aim counseling is to ensure safe and the right use of medication by patients so that they can obtain the required therapeutic benefit from the medication. If this is not done, the patient might not use the medication efficiently which can cause a medication error. Here are some problems of dispensing without counseling that can lead to medication error; How to use the medication and what it is The proper way to dispense a medication is to enlighten the patient on how to use it, which includes how to take (With or without food) and administer.

It was evident that Target seeks to provide a more consistent friendly service to their customers as well as take care of their employees. Customers seemed to be very satisfied and familiar with the workers. This excellent customer service was demonstrated even throughout consultation interactions between the pharmacist and patient. As discussed in IPPE, there are several communication skills that should be implemented when counseling a patient. The pharmacist was able to provide the appropriate amount of space for privacy, open-ended questions were mastered which allowed the patient to do more talking, the use of silence and pauses were also used appropriately to allow the patient enough time to form his/her thoughts, and the pharmacist was able to use reinforcers, such as “go on” and “tell me more about that” to indicate his basic understanding. There were limited barriers in exception to the remodeling of the pharmacy which presented physical barriers such as brighter lighting and different colored paint on 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

A physician could make mistakes in prescribing, the pharmacy could send the wrong medication, but who actually gave it to the patient is accountable for the consequences. For this reason, it’s our responsibility to implement change in our practice based on the evidence in order to ensure safe patient care.

Providers are very detailed oriented individuals. When prescribing medications they must be aware of the drug-to-drug interactions, food-to-drug interactions and side effects. Educating the patient on their diseases and how and when to administer there medications is imperative.

April, health literacy seem to be an ongoing issue and we all have to do our part to improve this. Many patients are just too embarrassed to speak up about not understanding the requirements for taking the prescribed medication. To the patient, the medication is a pill that must be taken, but is not clear that the time, amount, skipping days, all play an important role in the effectiveness of the medication. Patients simply don’t comprehend that you cannot replace one pill for two prescribed pills in order to stretch the course of the medication. This is why it’s necessary to educate the patient. It’s important for healthcare providers to spend that extra time educating their patients and not rush the process. If the provider has not

Medication error is one of the biggest problems in the healthcare field. Patients are dying due to wrong drug or dosage. Medication error is any preventable incident that leads to inappropriate medication use or harms the patient while the medication is in the control of the health care professional,or patient (U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2015). It is estimated about 44,000 inpatients die each year in the United States due to medication errors which were indeed preventable (Mahmood, Chaudhury, Gaumont & Rust, 2012). There are many factors that contribute to medication error. However, the most common that factors are human factors, right patient information, miscommunication of abbreviations, wrong dosage. Healthcare providers do not intend to make medication errors, but they happen anyways. Therefore, nursing should play a tremendous role to reduce medication error

The provision of written medication information given to the patient helps significantly in cases of medication non compliance (McGraw & Drennan 2004). This is because it aids in memory retention and presents patients with access to a reliable source of concise medication information, particularly if the patient needs to be reminded of certain aspects (Gorgos 2006). These written medication information sheets need to be provided in the patients primary, dominant language because it reduces the difficulty and limits barriers to patient understanding (Gorgos 2006).This is important because this intervention aims to increase a patient’s understanding of their medications, and when a patient feels more competent with the use of their medications, reduced

Good communication between the patient and pharmacists can also make a big difference in minimizing adverse effects. (11) a pharmacists can reduce adverse effects by mainly make sure the patient has a clear understanding of how and when to take the medicine given by giving clear instructions and making sure they understand if the instruction given is not followed what the consequences will be as some types of side effects occur by how the medication is taken.(4) furthermore in terms of individual variability a pharmacist should make sure they know the patents information such as allergies ,age ,weight clearly before giving any type of

While attending a typical pharmacy setting. I observed several pharmacists and patient interaction cases, focusing on the counseling and communication aspects. I am going to reflect on one of these cases, which was about worried and distracted old man who has been diagnosed with congestion on the heart and need to leave as soon as possible.

In the country of Canada there are approximately 31,000 licenced pharmacists, of which around 80% work in community pharmacies. For pharmacists working in Canada the average annual salary is around $95,000. The lower annual salary begins are $60,129 where the high of salaries are around $128,325.