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Determining Clinical Pharmacy Workload by Patient Disease Classification in Medical and Surgical Patients
Author(s) -
Stuchbery Peter,
Kong David CM,
DeSantis Giovan,
Lo Sing Kai
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of pharmacy practice and research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.222
H-Index - 22
eISSN - 2055-2335
pISSN - 1445-937X
DOI - 10.1002/j.2055-2335.2008.tb00818.x
Subject(s) - medicine , pharmacy , workload , clinical pharmacy , psychological intervention , medical record , medical emergency , emergency medicine , family medicine , surgery , nursing , computer science , operating system
Aim To determine the time needed to provide clinical pharmacy services to individual patient episodes for medical and surgical patients and the effect of patient presentation and complexity on the clinical pharmacy workload. Method During a 5‐month period in 2006 at two general hospitals, pharmacists recorded a defined range of activities that they provided for patients, including the actual times required for these tasks. A customised database linked to the two hospitals' patient administration systems stored the data according to the specific patient episode number. The influence of patient presentation and complexity on the clinical pharmacy activities provided was also examined. Results The average time required by pharmacists to undertake a medication history interview and medication reconciliation was 9.6 (SD 4.9) minutes. Interventions required 5.7 (SD 4.6) minutes, clinical review of the medical record 5.5 (SD 4.0) minutes and medication order review 3.5 (SD 2.0) minutes. For all of these activities, the time required for medical patients was greater than for surgical patients and greater for ‘complicated' patients. The average time required to perform all clinical pharmacy activities for 1071 completed patient episodes was 14.4 (SD 10.9) minutes and was greater for medical and ‘complicated' patients. Conclusion The time needed to provide clinical pharmacy services was affected by whether the patients were medical or surgical. The existence of comorbidities or complications affected these times. The times required to perform clinical pharmacy activities may not be consistent with recently proposed staff ratios for the provision of a basic clinical pharmacy service.