School of Pharmacy, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
Ther Clin Risk Manag. 2012;8:415-21. doi: 10.2147/TCRM.S37581. Epub 2012 Dec 6.
Interventions made by pharmacists to resolve issues when filling a prescription ensure the quality, safety, and efficacy of medication therapy for patients. The purpose of this study was to provide a current estimate of the number and types of interventions performed by community pharmacists during processing of prescriptions. This baseline data will provide insight into the factors influencing current practice and areas where pharmacists can redefine and expand their role.
A cross-sectional study of community pharmacist interventions was completed. Participants included third-year pharmacy students and their pharmacist preceptor as a data collection team. The team identified all interventions on prescriptions during the hours worked together over a 7-day consecutive period. Full ethics approval was obtained.
Nine student-pharmacist pairs submitted data from nine pharmacies in rural (n = 3) and urban (n = 6) centers. A total of 125 interventions were documented for 106 patients, with a mean intervention rate of 2.8%. The patients were 48% male, were mostly ≥18 years of age (94%), and 86% had either public or private insurance. Over three-quarters of the interventions (77%) were on new prescriptions. The top four types of problems requiring intervention were related to prescription insurance coverage (18%), drug product not available (16%), dosage too low (16%), and missing prescription information (15%). The prescriber was contacted for 69% of the interventions. Seventy-two percent of prescriptions were changed and by the end of the data collection period, 89% of the problems were resolved.
Community pharmacists are impacting the care of patients by identifying and resolving problems with prescriptions. Many of the issues identified in this study were related to correcting administrative or technical issues, potentially limiting the time pharmacists can spend on patient-focused activities.
药剂师在配药时采取的干预措施可确保患者药物治疗的质量、安全性和疗效。本研究的目的是提供社区药剂师在处理处方时进行的干预措施的数量和类型的最新估计。这些基线数据将深入了解影响当前实践的因素以及药剂师可以重新定义和扩展其角色的领域。
完成了一项社区药剂师干预措施的横断面研究。参与者包括三年级药学学生及其药剂师导师，他们作为一个数据收集小组。该团队在连续 7 天的工作时间内，共同确定了处方上的所有干预措施。已获得完整的伦理批准。
9 名学生-药剂师对来自农村（n=3）和城市（n=6）中心的 9 家药店的数据进行了提交。共记录了 106 名患者的 125 次干预，平均干预率为 2.8%。患者中男性占 48%，年龄大多在 18 岁及以上（94%），86%的人拥有公共或私人保险。超过四分之三（77%）的干预措施与新处方有关。需要干预的前四种类型的问题与处方保险覆盖范围（18%）、药物产品不可用（16%）、剂量过低（16%）和处方信息缺失（15%）有关。对于 69%的干预措施，联系了处方医生。72%的处方进行了更改，在数据收集结束时，89%的问题得到了解决。
社区药剂师通过识别和解决处方问题来影响患者的护理。本研究中确定的许多问题与纠正行政或技术问题有关，这可能限制了药剂师在以患者为中心的活动上花费的时间。
