Specialist pharmacists have become an established feature of the antibiotic stewardship landscape in hospitals throughout the UK over the last decade. This review examines the origins of the specialist antibiotic pharmacist and how the role has developed in recent years. Antibiotic pharmacists fulfil a vital function in modern National Health Service hospitals as key members of the infection co...

We estimated the cost and cost-effectiveness of a clinical pharmacist intervention known to improve the appropriateness of drug prescribing. Elderly veteran outpatients prescribed at least five drugs were randomized to an intervention (105 patients) or control (103) group and followed for 1 year. The intervention pharmacist provided advice to patients and their physicians during all general med...

We explored the associations between pharmacist-provided anticoagulation management in hospitalized Medicare patients and several major heath care outcomes: death rate, length of stay, Medicare charges, bleeding complications, and transfusions. Using the 1995 National Clinical Pharmacy Services database and the 1995 Medicare database for hospitals, data were retrieved for 717,396 Medicare patie...

After a hospitalization, approximately 1 out of 5 patients will suffer from an adverse event, and one-third of these complications are preventable. Having a pharmacist followup with patients a few days after leaving the hospital has been shown to significantly reduce re-hospitalizations and adverse drug events. In this work, we describe our design for an Embodied Conversational Agent system for...

PURPOSE The results of a survey assessing the practice settings, clinical activities, and reimbursement experiences of pharmacists with advanced-practice designations are reported. METHODS A questionnaire was sent to all certified Pharmacist Clinicians in New Mexico and all Clinical Pharmacist Practitioners in North Carolina (a total of 189 pharmacists at the time of the survey in late 2008) to...

BACKGROUND Multidisciplinary patient management including a clinical pharmacist shows an improvement in patient quality use of medicine. Implementation of a clinical pharmacy service represents a significant novel change in practice in Sri Lanka. Although attitudes of doctors and nurses are an important determinant of successful implementation, there is no Sri Lankan data about staff attitudes ...

Effective and standard approach to the role of pharmacy technicians The first goal would be to establish an effective and standard approach to developing the role of pharmacy technicians within the pharmacy work force. This goal is not new. Donald Francke identified this as a critical action approximately 40 years ago. Clearly, pharmacy technicians have been integrated within many pharmacies as...