CLINICAL PHARMACIST

 

 

 CLINICAL PHARMACIST

Clinical pharmacy services offer monitoring services for warded patients by the pharmacists. 

The services including therapeutic drug monitoring, medication counseling and dispensing medications to discharged patients. 

Clinical pharmacists are involved in ward round together with other medical team. 

Clinical pharmacists are responsible for ensuring that patient treatment is at an optimal level, to ensure the patient's condition is stable, provide counseling as well as to promote the proper and effective use of drugs.

Pharmacists are drug experts. Clinical pharmacists take this knowledge and apply it to clinical scenarios.

Clinical pharmacists perform functions beyond fundamental dispensing and order-processing activities. This typically involves optimization of medication selection, dosing, and monitoring. There are a wide variety of activities that can be considered clinical pharmacy activities.

Under the clinical context there are three types of pharmacists. First is a “staff pharmacist” who performs no or limited clinical pharmacist activities. Second is a “hybrid pharmacist” who performs dispensing and order-processing activities sometimes, then clinical activities other times. Third is a “clinical pharmacist” who only performs clinical pharmacy activities. It is not very common to find a pharmacist position that solely requires clinical pharmacist activities. Which pharmacists and activities healthcare administrators consider “clinical” can vary between organizations.

Clinical pharmacists are not superior to non-clinical pharmacists, they just practice pharmacy in a different way.

Examples of clinical pharmacist activities:

• Providing pharmacotherapy support to diagnosticians during inpatient medical ward rounds so that drug selection and dosing can be optimized
• Interviewing and counseling patients in an ambulatory care clinic to ensure appropriate monitoring for safety and efficacy during treatment of hepatitis C
• Developing institutional tools that help healthcare providers make smarter decisions related to medications