Pharmacist Intervention: Interventions by pharmacists have always been considered valuable input by the healthcare community in the patient care process by reducing medication errors, rationalizing the therapy, and reducing the cost of therapy. The role of the pharmacist has been diversified from dispensing medications to patient care, patient counseling, health care education, and community service to clinical practice. All prescriptions must be reviewed by pharmacists before dispensing and stressed that the outcomes should be documented as a result of direct patient care by the pharmacy.
Any error in ordering, transcribing, dispensing,
administering, and monitoring the process of medication is called a medication
error. Intervention by the pharmacist is warranted to detect these medication
therapy problems, after which, solutions for these problems can be invented or
drug therapy optimized for each patient. These interventions have developed over
time and their forms; vary from the simplest handwritten form to the
computerized databases. Furthermore, many of these problems can be prevented by
educating healthcare providers about them.
Healthcare professionals expect pharmacists and pharmacies
to have diversified responsibilities including monitoring medication for people
with acute and chronic diseases,
operating repeat prescription services, reviewing medication for
long-term users, prescribing under protocols, advising on the management of
common conditions, and participating in local and national health promotion or
disease prevention activities. Documentation of their interventions is
important for justifying pharmacist’s services to the patient, healthcare
administrators and providers, and patient caretakers, to strengthen the profession
and society. These clinical interventions of pharmacists not only have a
positive impact on patient care but also decreased costs. Recently, electronic
systems and commercially available products and software packages are used for the
documentation of clinical pharmacy interventions more efficiently than paper
systems. However, most out-patient pharmacies do not have a central database
for capturing interventions at observed locations.