DOES MORE SPECIALIST PHARMACIST TIME IN A CLINICAL AREA EQUAL MORE ACTIVITY?

Area of Science:

• Pharmacology
• Clinical Pharmacy
• Patient Safety

Background:

• A medication safety initiative in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) aimed to evaluate the impact of extended pharmacist presence.
• Incident reporting highlighted omissions of time-critical medicines as a key safety concern.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the effect of an extended-hours PICU-trained pharmacist on medication management for PICU patients.
• To determine if increased pharmacist exposure reduces drug omission errors.

Main Methods:

• A pilot study involved a PICU-trained pharmacist attending afternoon ward rounds and reviewing admissions/priority patients.
• Data collected included clinical interventions, staff queries, drug omissions prevented, and on-call pharmacist avoidance.
• The pharmacist remained on-site for an hour past regular pharmacy opening hours.

Main Results:

• The extended-hours pharmacist handled 395 drug-related queries and intervened in 412 prescriptions.
• 126 of 236 after-hours drug assays required pharmacist intervention.
• Seventeen omissions of time-critical medicines were prevented, and 11 instances of calling the on-call pharmacist were avoided.

Conclusions:

• Increased access to a late-hours PICU pharmacist led to significant clinical interventions and prevented medication delays.
• Specialist pharmacist presence reduced the need for on-call pharmacist support for advice and medication supplies.
• These findings supported the expansion of clinical pharmacy services to the PICU.