Clinical pharmacist interventions and barriers for documenting these interventions at King Faisal specialist hospital and research center

Abstract EN

The purpose of this study was to describe documented clinical pharmacists’ interventions and explore barriers, plus facilitators for documenting such interventions.

The study was conducted at King Faisal Specialist Hospital.

Clinical pharmacists’ interventions performed during the period between June 2007 and June 2010 from the hospital’s electronic documentation system was extracted.

Information recoded in the system is the following: (i) cause of intervention, (ii) types of intervention, (iii) clinical significance of the intervention, (iv) intervention acceptance by physicians and (v) intervention expected outcomes.

To understand documentation barriers and facilitators, an online questionnaire was used.

Data entered and analyzed in Microsoft Excel 2007.

Descriptive statistics was performed.

The total number of interventions documented was 9906 interventions.

The majority of interventions were accepted by physicians (94%).

Most of these interventions were with moderate clinical significance (82%).

Nine pharmacists out of 18 responded to our questionnaire (response rate 50%).

Finding time to document interventions was the most common barrier and improving the electronic documentation system was the most common facilitator.

Pharmacists make significant number of clinical interventions, which are expected to improve patients’ outcomes.

Pharmacists acknowledge that they do not document all their clinical interventions; several strategies can be employed to improve the documentation process.