Clinical pharmacist

The aim and Objectives of the study was to identify the impact of clinical pharmacists counselling on quality of life among cancer patients, To evaluate the life style of cancer patients before and after their cancer diagnosis and assess the relation of lifestyle with occurrence of cancer. Cancer patients were enrolled and categorized into intervention and control group by block randomization. Intervention group received information leaflets, face to face counselling during study period where as the control group received the conventional care only. The Quality of Life (QoL) of patients was assessed by European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) QLQ-C30 questionnaire at baseline and at the final follow up. life style pattern is assessed by closed ended questions. 130 subjects (65 patients in the intervention and 65 in the control) were enrolled their quality of life was assessed. In the intervention group, quality of life at baseline was 51.17+13.81. After counselling the intervention group QoL was 67.30+7.98. The paired‘t’ test report revealed that there was a difference in quality of life (p

ICU patients are at high risk of drug-drug interactions. In Middle East there is no sufficient data about the incidence of drug interactions. To explore the frequency and pattern of potential drug-drug interactions (PDDIs)and to study the impact of clinical pharmacist educational intervention on the (PDDIs) in surgical intensive care unit. A three phases study,phase (1) (pre-intervention phase)wasaretrospective cohort study of the frequency of potential DDIsin 500 prescriptions of patients in surgical ICU using Lexi-Interact interaction database. Phase (2) (intervention phase) involved the implementation of DDIs reducing measures. Phase 3 (post-intervention phase) was a prospective study of the frequency of potential DDIs in the 500 prescription collected after intervention phase (phase 2). A total of 2228 PDDIs were identified during phase 1 and 2139 PDDIs were identified during phase 3. In both phases most of the PDDIs encountered were of ‘Moderate’ severity (89%) of the PDDIs during the pre-intervention phase and 91.5% during the post-intervention phase were of risk rating C. There was no statistical difference between mean number of PDDIs in pre-intervention and post-intervention phases (P=0.859). There was no statistical difference in percent of PDDIs in the different degrees of severity between pre-intervention and post-intervention phase (Z=-1.4, P= 0.153). The present study demonstrated a relatively high frequency of occurrence of PDDIs among patients in surgical ICU. However, most of them were of minor-to-moderate clinical significance.

Errors resulting in patient injury and death are occurring in hospitals at significantly high and unacceptable numbers. Evidence from a number of sources over several decades indicates that a substantial number of patients suffer iatrogenic injuries while in hospital. The main aims of this study was to detect, identify and document the onset, underlying cause, type of medication errors and assess the severity of medication errors in the outpatient departments of a south Indian hospital. A prospective observational study was conducted at outpatient departments of general medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, orthopedics in Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Kadapa for the period of 6 months. The study was approved by the Institutional Ethical Committee, RIMS, Kadapa. Approximately, a total of 1296 medications were prescribed in 390 cases, and the average number of medications prescribed per patient was found to be 3.37.The present study showed a high incidence of medication errors in females (73%) over males and (27.50%) of medication errors in patients between 13-30yrs.The present study showed that prescribing errors 347(96.38%) was the most common among the medication errorsMajority of errors encountered in Anti-microbial agents 84 (23.33%). Severity level assessment of medication errors revealed that majority of errors (84.99%) were fallen under the category-B, C&D (Error, No Harm). A clinical pharmacist can play a major role in this situation appears to be a strong intervention and early detection and prevention of medication errors and thus can improve the quality of care to the patients. Key words:Clinical pharmacist, evaluation, medication errors