We introduced a pharmaceutical care plan based on pharmaceutical management methods for liver cirrhosis patients. The plan included a check list of important points and through its use, we were able to pinpoint the pharmaceutical problems and conduct interventions to solve them. We evaluated its effectiveness in the clinical setting.
Our subjects were liver cirrhosis patients who were hospitalized in the Department of Gastroenterology from March to October 2004. The pharmaceutical care plan was adopted in the latter four months of this period and we made a comparison between before and after introduction. We evaluated the pinpointing of pharmaceutical problems, pharmacist interventions, and the numbers of complaints of patients.
The check list mentioned the pharmacist interventions conducted for the problems and included guidance for treatment from the time of admission to discharge. The before introduction of pharmaceutical care group had 30 patients (7 females and 23 males, average age 64 years), and the after introduction group had 17 patients (7 females and 10 males, average age 58 years).
There was a 4.8-fold increase in the total number of pharmaceutical problems addressed for the after introduction group as compared with the before introduction group, a significant increase. Further, there was a 2.1-fold increase in the total number of pharmacist interventions in the after introduction group as compared with the before introduction group, also a significant increase. As for the number of patient complaints, there was a 1.2-fold increase in the after introduction group as compared with the before introduction group, again a significant difference. We therefore consider that our pharmaceutical care plan had been successful in improving the quality of care.
