Drug information services provided through a critical care satellite pharmacy

In January, 1982, a satellite pharmacy began operating in the medical and coronary intensive care units of the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg. This program, which has been described in detail elsewhere, provides 24 hour on-site coverage. In addition to total unit dose and intravenous admixture services the pharmacist also monitors drug therapy and provides drug information to other health professionals in the area. With the extended hours of coverage and ready accessibility of the pharmacist it was anticipated that utilization of clinical pharmacy services would increase. As one means of assessing whether this did in fact occur, all drug information provided by the pharmacist, whether solicited or unsolicited, was recorded and tabulated each month for the first year of operation of the satellite pharmacy. This report presents the results of the data analysis.