Implementation and Assessment of a Pharmacy Educational Program Concerning Laboratory Monitoring for Medications.

BACKGROUND

The pharmacist's role in monitoring medication therapy, including the ability to order laboratory tests as a delegated medical function, has increased dramatically over the past 20 years.

OBJECTIVES

To implement and assess the impact of an intervention designed to educate pharmacists about appropriate medication-related laboratory monitoring and clinical interpretation of results.

METHODS

This pilot project had a pretest-posttest study design. The intervention was an educational program comprising 8 self-directed learning modules, each with a corresponding seminar. Evaluation of the program included scoring of the appropriateness and significance of clinical interventions related to laboratory monitoring, pre- and post-program test scores, and participants' subjective assessments of their abilities to order and assess the results of medication-related laboratory investigations. Descriptive statistics, the Wilcoxon signed rank test, the Student -test, and the paired Student -test were used where appropriate. Associations were assessed with the Pearson or Spearman rho correlation coefficient. All statistical tests were 2-tailed, and the value for significance was established a priori at 0.05.

RESULTS

There was no statistically significant difference with regard to the appropriateness ( = 0.70) or significance ( = 0.94) of clinical interventions undertaken before and after the educational program. Among the 21 pharmacists who completed the program, the average test score (± standard deviation) was 27.2 ± 8.1 before the program, increasing to 39.2 ± 8.7 after the program ( < 0.001). There was a statistically significant improvement in the perceived level of knowledge for each individual module ( < 0.05 for all).

CONCLUSIONS

The establishment of an educational program led to improvements in both subjective and objective measures of knowledge and perceived abilities to order and assess the results of medication-related laboratory tests.