A ward round is a visit made by a medical practitioner, alone or with a team of health professionals and medical students, to hospital inpatients at their bedside to review and follow up on the progress in their health. Usually, at least one ward round is conducted every day to review the progress of each inpatient, though more than one is not uncommon. In certain practice settings such as psychiatry, the “ward round” may be conducted away from the patient’s bedside in a non-traditional fashion, where the team meets elsewhere to review each case.
Goals and objectives for clinical pharmacists on ward rounds:
As important members of the healthcare team,
pharmacists should attend ward rounds and clinical meetings whenever possible.
This enables pharmacists to contribute prospectively to patient care through
the provision of drug therapy. The goals
of a clinical pharmacist’s participation in ward rounds are to:
• Gain an improved
understanding of the patient’s clinical status and progress, currently planned
investigations, and therapeutic goals.
• Provide relevant
information on various aspects of the patient’s drug therapy such as
pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, drug availability, cost, drug interactions, and
adverse reactions.
• Optimize therapeutic
management by influencing drug therapy selection, implementation, monitoring, and
follow-up.
• Investigate unusual drug
orders or doses.
• Assimilate additional
information about the patient such as co-morbidities, medication compliance, or alternative
medicine use that might be relevant to their management.
• Detect adverse drug
reactions and drug interactions.
• Participate in patient
discharge planning.
Ward round participation also provides many learning
opportunities for pharmacists. It allows pharmacists to see firsthand how drugs
are used and prescribed and to see the effects of these drugs on patients. With
time, pharmacists develop an appreciation of how the patient’s wishes and their
social, cultural, and economic circumstances may influence therapeutic choices.
Even for experienced clinical pharmacists in teaching hospitals, it is very
rare to finish a ward round without gaining new perspectives on some aspect of
therapeutics or patient care. For those involved in academia and research, ward
rounds allow the identification of cases for clinical teaching and publication.
Not least, ward-round participation strengthens the inter-professional
relationship among various health professionals, leading to better healthcare
practice and research.