International journal of clinical pharmacy
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Impact of medication reconciliation at discharge on continuity of patient care in France.
Background Care transitions from hospital to community have been identified as risk points for the continuity of patient care. Without upstream information, the community pharmacist (CP) cannot ensure error-free drug dispensing. A hospital-to-community records transmission process would enable CPs to guarantee that all prescription drugs are ready to pick up at hospital discharge, and to improve their responses to patient health inquiries. ⋯ Mean hospital pharmacist time input required for this initiative was an estimated 21 min for the control group versus 35 min for the intervention group. Conclusion The results provide a strong rationale for embedding the process longer-term and extending it out to other healthcare services. A pre-project study is needed to define which service departments and patients groups should be given priority for this process initiative.
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Multicenter Study
Assessing prescribing of NSAIDs, antiplatelets, and anticoagulants in Canadian family medicine using chart review.
Background Drug-related problems have been identified as a major contributor to emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and death. The most commonly implicated medications are nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), antiplatelets, and anticoagulants. Considering a significant proportion of these harms are preventable, indicators to identify risky prescribing before they lead to harm have been developed. ⋯ Conclusion Over one-third of the patients who were using high-risk medications were using them potentially inappropriately. Although pharmacists have been shown to reduce the amount of inappropriate prescribing, very few patients using these medications were referred to the pharmacist for a full medication review. These data suggest that there is opportunity for the identification and assessment of these patients when prescribing or dispensing these high-risk medications.
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Multicenter Study
Potentially inappropriate medications in a sample of Portuguese nursing home residents: Does the choice of screening tools matter?
Background Potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) are often found in high proportion among the elderly population. The STOPP criteria have been suggested to detect more PIMs in European elderly than the Beers criteria. Objective This study aimed to determine the prevalence of PIMs and potential prescribing omissions (PPOs) in a sample of Portuguese nursing homes residents. Setting Four elderly facilities in mainland Portugal Method A descriptive cross-sectional study was used. Elderly polypharmacy patients were included in the study and their medication (registered in patient clinical records) analysed using the Beers (2012 original version and 2008 version adapted to Portugal), STOPP (Screening Tool of Older Person's Prescriptions) and START (Screening Tool to Alert doctors to Right Treatment) criteria. Data were analysed using univariate and bivariate descriptive statistics, considering a confidence interval of 95 %. ⋯ Prevalence of PIMs and PPOs. Results The sample included 161 individuals, with a mean age of 84.7 years (SD = 6.35), 68.9 % being female. A total of 807 PIMs and 90 PPOs were identified through the application of the three set of criteria. The prevalence of PIMs using the most recent version of the Beers criteria was 85.1 and 42.1 % for independent and dependent of diagnosis, respectively. The Portuguese adaptation of this same tool indicated a lower prevalence of PIMs, 60.3 and 16.7 %, respectively. The prevalence of PIMs using the STOPP criteria was 75.4 %, whilst the prevalence of PPOs, using START, was 42.9 %. There were significant differences in the mean number of PIMs detected depending on the tool used. (p < 0.001). Conclusions The application of the studied criteria in an elderly sample enabled the identification of a notable amount of PIMs and PPOs, indicating there is room for improving the quality of care. The variation in prevalence indicates careful choice of the tool is a prerequisite for engaging in medication review. Using START/STOPP criteria enabled a more holistic approach to the quality of prescribing in the elderly, highlighting low levels of cardiovascular risk prevention and abuse of psychotropic drugs, aside with system failures largely preventable by electronic prescribing and alert generation.
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Background People diagnosed with serious mental illnesses (SMIs) such as schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder are frequently treated with antipsychotics. National guidance advises the use of shared decision-making (SDM) in antipsychotic prescribing. There is currently little data on the opinions of health professionals on the role of SDM. ⋯ Conclusion The mental health pharmacists support SDM for antipsychotic prescribing, believing that it improves outcomes. However, barriers are seen to limit implementation. More research is needed into overcoming the barriers and measuring the benefits of SDM, along with exploring a more inter-professional approach to SDM.
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Setting Fifteen community pharmacies in the UK. Objective Proof of concept study to test the use of community pharmacies for active case finding of patients with coeliac disease. Methods Customers accessing over-the counter and prescription medicines indicated in the treatment of possible symptoms of coeliac disease over a 6 month period were offered a free point of care test. ⋯ Of 43 customers who returned the satisfaction survey, all would recommend the service to others, believing the community pharmacy to be a suitable location. Community pharmacists believed that it enabled them to improve relationships with their customers and that medical practices were receptive to the service. Conclusion This proof of concept study has shown that community pharmacies using a point of care test can effectively recognise and refer patients for confirmatory coeliac disease testing with high levels of customer and service provider satisfaction.