International journal of clinical pharmacy
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The recommendation to restrict the use of activated protein C (APC) to patients with severe sepsis and the highest risk of death originates from large trials that were subject to major exclusion criteria. ⋯ These findings support the view that targeting APC treatment to patients with septic shock and a very high risk is a sound and safe approach. However, due to lack of consistent evidence from randomized studies APC was recently removed from the market.
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Appropriate prescribing is fundamental to successful pharmacotherapy. The status of current ambulatory medication practices in medicine and pharmacy would be better understood through an analysis of community pharmacy prescription claims. ⋯ Prescription errors are prevalent in ambulatory care in Taiwan, and differential practice standards exist between community and hospital services. This disparity needs to be reconciled by pertinent initiatives to enhance community-hospital and pharmacist-general practitioner communication and interprofessional educational efforts to improve medication use and safety.
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Clinical pharmacy in a hospital setting is relatively new in Sweden. Its recent introduction at the University Hospital in Uppsala has provided an opportunity for evaluation by other relevant professionals of the integration of clinical pharmacists into the health-care team. ⋯ The majority of the respondents, both GPs and hospital based physicians and nurses, were satisfied with the new collaboration with the ward based pharmacists and perceived that the quality of the patients' drug therapy and drug-related patient safety had increased.
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Comparative Study
The effect of medication reconciliation in elderly patients at hospital discharge.
To assess the impact of medication reconciliation interventions on medication error rates when elderly patients are discharged from hospital to community care or nursing homes. ⋯ Medication errors are still common when elderly patients are transferred from hospital to community/primary care. The main risk factor seems to be the specific medication dispensing system (ApoDos) or rather the process on how to use it. When this system was supported by clinical pharmacists, the error rate dropped to the same level as for patients without ApoDos.