Analysis of Responses of Clinical Pharmacists to Questions on Drugs from Medical Staff and Their Effect on Therapy

Abstract

Clinical pharmacists now participate in drug therapy as members of the patient care team and play a role in the safety management of drugs. Our role is thus expanding into the realm of clinical practice and we have more chances to communicate with other medical staff. They often ask us for information on drugs and providing them with such information can have an effect on drug therapy.
With this situation in mind, we investigated the nature of questions asked by medical staff and determined the differences between the information requested by doctors and that asked for by nurses, targeting questions and answers give at Kanazawa University Hospital from April through October in 2003. There were 206 questions in total consisting of 91 questions from doctors and 111 questions from nurses. We found that 27.7% of the responses we gave resulted in therapy changes such as prescription adjustment. The rate for therapy changes was higher for doctors than for nurses (41.8% versus 17.1%).
In conclusion, the involvement of pharmacists helps to ensure proper drug use and leads to qualitative improvements in medical care but it is necessary to accumulate data as evidence of the useful role that pharmacists can play in this respect.