Scottish role for pharmacists in cardiovascular disease
Pharmacists have a pivotal role in the prevention of
cardiovascular disease and the safe delivery of clinically effective cardiovascular
services.
So says the report of the Scottish Executive’s task
force on coronary heart disease and stroke, published on 11 September.
The report outlines the roles of pharmacists, both
hospital and community based, that contribute to reducing heart disease
and stroke. These include community pharmacy smoking cessation and risk
screening services; and hospital pharmacy practices that ensure that appropriate
secondary prevention therapy is started for cardiac patients, followed
by monitoring of that treatment. It goes on to say that pharmacists in
all environments provide information and advice tailored towards individual
needs and contribute to cardiac rehabilitation programmes.
“Such initiatives help patients to get the best
out of their medicines and help with concordance. Clearly, there are opportunities
to share this expertise within the context of the wider team and managed
clinical networks (MCNs) could facilitate this,” it states. Further examples
of good practice include medication reviews directed towards coronary
risk groups and pharmaceutical supervision of anticoagulation therapy.
“All these developments require good inter-
and intra-professional communication supported by documentation,”
the task force reports. “A national pharmaceutical working group
has developed a paper-based system for documenting the pharmaceutical
care of patients requiring secondary prevention treatment for CHD. If
shown to be effective, this should be developed into a software package
to enhance the quality of care as patients transfer within and across
health care sectors... If demonstrated to be effective, the MCNs will
need to consider how best to secure implementation.”
It goes on: “MCNs will be critical in securing services
designed to meet patients’ needs and will facilitate multi-professional
working.
“A national network of specialist pharmacists promotes
effective treatment and consistent standards of pharmaceutical care. These
pharmacists are ideally placed to be integrated into the MCNs.”
The task force was established in 1998 to investigate
the nature and quality of cardiac and stroke prevention and to advise
on the future direction of services.
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Coronary heart disease/stroke task force, report,
The Stationery Office Bookshop, 71 Lothian Road, Edinburgh EH3 9AZ
(tel 0870 606 5566)
ISBN 0 7559 0168 1
Free of charge
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