Hospital pharmacy
Hospitals and other institutions and facilities, such as
outpatient clinics, drug-dependency treatment facilities, poison control
centres, drug information centres, and long-term care facilities, may be
operated by the government or privately. While many of the pharmacist’s
activities in such facilities may be similar to those performed by community
pharmacists, they differ in a number of ways.
Additionally, the hospital or
institutional pharmacist:
• has more opportunity to interact closely with the
prescriber and, therefore, to promote the rational prescribing and use of
drugs;
• in larger hospital and institutional pharmacies, is
usually one of several pharmacists, and thus has a greater opportunity to
interact with others, to specialize and to gain greater expertise;
• having access to medical records, is in a position to
influence the selection of drugs and dosage regimens, to monitor patient
compliance and therapeutic response to drugs, and to recognize and report
adverse drug reactions;
• can more easily than the community pharmacist assess and
monitor patterns of drug usage and thus recommend changes where necessary;
• serves as a member of policy-making committees, including
those concerned with drug selection, the use of antibiotics, and hospital
infections (Drug and Therapeutics Committee) and thereby influences the
preparation and composition of an essential-drug list or formulary;
• is in a better position to educate other health
professionals about the rational use of drugs;
• more easily participates in studies to determine the
beneficial or adverse effects of drugs, and is involved in the analysis of
drugs in body fluids;
• can control hospital manufacture and procurement of drugs
to ensure the supply of high-quality products;
• takes part in the planning and implementation of clinical
trials.
