DrugXpert Blog

Pregnancy and breastfeeding are common conditions or situations that lead women to pharmacies for products, advice, or both. By virtue of their training, knowledge, and professional judgement, pharmacists should be well positioned to play a role in the selection and appropriate use of medications by pregnant and lactating women. Such a role is consistent with the responsibilities embodied in the pharmaceutical care concept and with pharmacists' high level of accessibility to patients. Pregnant woman Pharmacist Responsibility Offering Pharmaceutical Care In Pregnant And Breastfeeding Mother Pharmacists have developed skills in pharmacology and pharmacokinetics assessing the bio-availability of drugs identifying possible side effects and contraindications. Professional knowledge is used to establish the safety of medicines in particular situations. When we undertake a pharmaceutical assessment to inform patients of the balance of risk of benefit for herself and her baby of taking a d...

Pharmaceutical care is a process of drug therapy management that requires a change in the orientation of traditional professional attitudes and re-engineering of the traditional pharmacy environment. Although "drug therapy" typically refers to intended, beneficial effects of pharmacologic drugs, in this document, "drug therapy" refers to the intended, beneficial use of drugs -- whether diagnostic or therapeutic -- and thus includes diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals, X-ray contrast media, etc. in addition to pharmacological drugs. Similarly, "drug therapy plan" includes the outcomes oriented plan for diagnostic drug use in addition to pharmacologic drug use. Elements of PC Elements Of Pharmaceutical Care Certain elements of structure must be in place to provide quality pharmaceutical care. Some of these elements are: 1) knowledge, skill, and function of personnel 2) systems for data collection, documentation, and transfer of information 3) efficient work flow...

A stepwise approach would ensure consistency and make it easy to adopt pharmaceutical care in a practice setting. Cipolle et al. (1998) have defined pharmaceutical care as a nine-step process. Strand identified the three basic components as: assessment of patient needs; development of a care plan; and follow up evaluation. This post, although portraying a similar process, delineates six steps in the overall process. Steps in pharmaceutical care Practice Principles Of Pharmaceutical Care Steps In Pharmaceutical Care Process 1. Data Collection 1.1 The pharmacist conducts an initial interview with the patient for the purposes of establishing a professional working relationship and initiating the patient's pharmacy record. In some situations (e.g. pediatrics, geriatrics, critical care, language barriers) the opportunity to develop a professional relationship with and collect information directly from the patient may not exist. Under these circumstances, the pharmacist should work direc...

Pharmaceutical Care is a patient-centered, outcomes oriented pharmacy practice that requires the pharmacist to work in concert with the patient and the patient's other healthcare providers to promote health, to prevent disease, and to assess, monitor, initiate, and modify medication use to assure that drug therapy regimens are safe and effective. The goal of Pharmaceutical Care is to optimize the patient's health-related quality of life, and achieve positive clinical outcomes, within realistic economic expenditures. Pharmaceutical care practice principles Principles Of Pharmaceutical Care To achieve this goal, the following must be accomplished: A Professional Relationship Must Be Established And Maintained A relationship based upon caring, trust, open communication, cooperation, and mutual decision making is established and maintained between pharmacist and patient. The pharmacist holds the patient's welfare paramount, maintains an appropriate attitude of caring for the pa...

Pharmacokinetics is currently defined as the study of the time course of drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME). Clinical pharmacokinetics is the application of pharmacokinetic principles to the safe and effective therapeutic management of drugs in an individual patient. It is the process of applying pharmacokinetic principles to determine the dosage regimens of specific drug products for specific patients to maximize pharmacotherapeutic effects and minimize toxic effects. Application of these principles requires an understanding of the ADME characteristics of specific drug products in specific diseases and patient populations. The development of patients’ individualized dosage regimens should be based on integrated findings from monitoring both the drug concentration-versus-time profiles in biological fluids and the pharmacologic responses to these drug products. Pharmacokinetic models the concentration-time profile using key parameters, such as volume of dist...

The pharmacist interventions can be patient focused (health), and or drug focused (drug therapy). Patient-focused interventions are those that recognise the role of patients as active participants in the process of securing appropriate, effective, safe and responsive healthcare. Medication adherence As individuals or family members, patients can play a distinct role in their own care. This can be done by diagnosing and treating minor, self-limiting conditions; by preventing occurrence or recurrence of disease or harm; by selecting the most appropriate form of treatment in partnership with health professionals for more serious illness; by actively managing long term conditions; and by medication adherence. Fostering high standards of health literacy and a sense of ownership of their health may be the best way to ensure that people adopt healthier lifestyles, helping to meet health and behavioural targets as well as moderating demand for healthcare resources. Read Also :  Things To E...

Laboratory values are the result of laboratory tests carried out by a diagnostic laboratory. Minor diagnosis can be carried out in community pharmacy. An example is blood pressure monitor and blood glucose level. There are different types of laboratory tests. Some are compared with normal values. Others only state there are abnormalities with the body part. Laboratory values relevance Pharmacists have a key role in selecting appropriate laboratory tests for therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM), interpreting tests to determine whether a drug is producing its desired therapeutic effect, and avoiding adverse drug effects. They can recommend that a laboratory test be done only if the results may lead to some action such as a dosage reduction, discontinuation of a drug, or ordering of additional tests to confirm the presence of an adverse effect. The pharmacist should select the pertinent objective data needed to follow a specific drug therapy. Current medication can also be included. Read Als...

Physical assessment in pharmaceutical care (PC) is defined as the systemic acquisition of physical data and symptomatology of patients for the purpose of initial evaluation and care recommendation in process case management, medical referral or outcome assessment. The information can be collected through patient record review or by performing physical assessment. Physical assessment techniques Physical assessment makes use of four techniques or skills. They are inspection, palpation, percussion, and auscultation done in this order unless you're performing an abdominal assessment. Palpation and percussion can alter bowel sounds, so you'd inspect, auscultate, percuss, then palpate an abdomen. It is not always necessary to carry out each of these activities every time. Each skill requires practice to master, some more than others. Read Also :  Benefits Of Pharmaceutical Care To The Pharmacist, Patient And The Government Physical assessment is part of objective data. Objective data...

Patient interview is crucial for proper diagnosis and pharmaceutical care (PC). Pharmacists must gather patient-specific medical and drug histories competently, evaluate the data collected, identify and prioritize a patient's drug therapy problem(s), develop and implement a care plan, and monitor the outcomes achieved to practice patient-centered pharmacy. Integral to patient-centered pharmacy practice is the process of collecting a patient's history to find and resolve the 7 types of drug therapy problems: no indication for drug therapy; dosage too high; dosage too low; wrong drug (also referred to as ineffective drug); adverse drug reaction; inappropriate compliance; and needs additional drug therapy. Read Also:  Benefits Of Pharmaceutical Care To The Pharmacist, Patient And The Government Medication therapy management services should include a systematic process of collecting patient-specific information, assessing drug therapy to identify medication-related problems, priori...