Wilson W Chu, Eugene Leung, Ronnie F Tsang, Shirley W Yip, Jacob K So, Kathy H Fung, Zac Wong, Jessica Chan and Charles Lo
Objective: The primary objective of this study is to investigate the impact on pharmacists’ pre-prescription vetting advanced screening on the effectiveness of identifying drug-related problems (DRPs). The aim is to evaluate the impact of the pharmacists’ pre-vetting advanced screening on the enhancement of dispensing workflow and to reduce unnecessary uplication of effort in the dispensing procedures.
Methods: This is a prospective interventional cohort study, with a control group, carried out in United Christian Hospital Hong Kong. In the control arm, all prescriptions were processed according to the standard procedures from 19th June to 06th July 2020. In the intervention arm, it involved a workflow re-engineering having two clinical pharmacists to screen the rescriptions and to perform clinical checking before the data entry process from 05th June to 18th June 2020. A standardised checklist was used to guide the clinical checking. The number of prescriptions with potential DRPs requiring clarification, identified at different stages, were compared between the intervention and control arms.
Results: In the control group, 152 interventions were made with 56% of them were made in the vetting stage by dispensers and 44% of interventions were made at the checking and issuing stages by pharmacists or senior dispensers. In the intervention group, a total of 216 interventions were captured with 76% of interventions were made by pharmacists at the early dispensing stage before data entry.
Conclusion: Workflow re-engineering having clinical pharmacists to screen the prescriptions and to perform clinical checking before the data entry process could provide an effective way to detect drug-related problems at early stages of the hospital pharmacy dispensing process.
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