Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Impact of pharmacist intervention in patient counseling at point of hospital discharge in a specialized cardiac center in Saudi Arabia

Turki Assiri¹ , Fowad Khurshid², Meshal Almutairi¹, Mona Alhusayyen¹, Fahad Alkharji¹, Mohammed Alsultan²

¹Department of Pharmacy, Prince Sultan Cardiac Center; ²Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research Unit, Department of Clinical Pharmacy, College of Pharmacy, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

For correspondence:- Turki Assiri Email: Tassiri@pscc.med.sa Tel:+966114783000

Received: 20 September 2016 Accepted: 18 April 2017 Published: 30 May 2017

Citation: Assiri T, Khurshid F, Almutairi M, Alhusayyen M, Alkharji F, Alsultan M. Impact of pharmacist intervention in patient counseling at point of hospital discharge in a specialized cardiac center in Saudi Arabia. Trop J Pharm Res 2017; 16(5):1187-1193 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v16i5.29

© 2017 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To determine the interventions associated with the pharmacist’s patient counseling and review of discharge prescriptions of patients from a specialized cardiac center in Saudi Arabia.

Methods: This was a prospective interventional study conducted at Prince Sultan Cardiac Center (PSCC) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for a duration of 12 months. The pharmacist responsible for providing patient counseling reviewed the patient records, collected patient demographics and clinical data, as well as medical and medication history, diagnosis and discharge (treatment) plan.

Results: The study included 2008 patients who met the inclusion criteria. The counseling pharmacist identified and provided interventions to 358 (18 %) patients for 508 (3.4 %) items. About half of counseling pharmacist interventions concerned involved the addition of a drug to treatment regimen followed by drug discontinuation (28.1 %). The most common reason for adding the drug during patient counseling was the omission of medications (35 %). Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors/angiotensin receptor blockers (ACEI/ARBs), antidiabetics and antihyperlipidemics were the classes of drugs often associated with counseling pharmacist interventions. The cost-saving interventions identified were 200 (39.4 %). Out of these, drug discontinuation (n = 143) was the most frequent suggestion provided by the intervening pharmacist, followed by a dose reduction resulting in cost savings of 66.5 % (US $ 6,590.10) and 8.9 % (US $ 882.32), respectively.

Conclusion: The results indicate that discharge medication discrepancies decrease as a result of pharmacist-facilitated patient counseling at the point of hospital discharge

Keywords: Discharged patients, Cardiac, Counseling, Pharmacist-intervention, Coronary artery disease