Practice spotlight: emergency department pharmacist who makes house calls.

Practice spotlight: a telepharmacy model of care for hospitals.

Weeneebayko General Hospital in Moose Factory, Ontario, is a 30-bed acute care hospital that serves the 9000 residents living on the James Bay coast of Ontario. Most of the population consists of Native Canadians living in 6 communities, 4 of which are accessible only by plane or by boat. Traditionally, the hospital pharmacy was to be staffed with one full-time hospital pharmacist. There are al...

Back to black bag and horse-and-buggy medicine.

pelling, particularly in an era in which treatment of chronic diseases is consuming more of the health care dollar and more senior citizens need care. But financial incentives for physicians to return to black bag and horse-and-buggy medicine haven’t followed suit. “The majority of family doctors don’t make home visits. So these seniors sort of slip through the cracks until there’s a crisis and...

Drug history taking and the identification of drug related problems in an accident and emergency department.

OBJECTIVE To determine the incidence of drug related problems that fail to be noted on casualty cards in patients subsequently admitted, and to compare medication histories as recorded by accident and emergency (A&E) senior house officers (SHOs) and a pharmacist. METHODS An initial retrospective survey of 1459 acute inpatient admissions through A&E over a three month period was followed by a ...

Eliciting comprehensive medication histories in the emergency department: the role of the pharmacist

The Australian Pharmaceutical Advisory Committee guidelines call for a detailed medication history to be taken at the first point of admission to hospital. Accurate medication histories are vital in optimising health outcomes and have been shown to reduce mortality rates. This study aimed to examine the accuracy of medication histories taken in the Emergency Department of the Royal Adelaide Hos...

Practice spotlight: drug safety pharmacist.