The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 275 No 7379 p715
10 December 2005

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Pharmacists enhance safety in emergency resuscitations

Employing a specialist clinical pharmacist to work in the accident and emergency department of a hospital improves patient care and reduces medicines-related errors during emergency resuscitations. This is the finding of a team of pharmacists from the US who presented their work at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, this week.

The team, from a regional trauma centre in Rochester, New York, reviewed 200 patient records and found that their emergency medicine clinical pharmacist had been present for 25 out of 178 emergency resuscitations evaluated. In the group where the pharmacist had not been present, adverse drug events were documented for nine patients and 17 documentation errors were identified, including the use of unapproved abbreviations, errors in drug units, and an incorrect drug name being recorded. No adverse drug events or documentation errors were identified in the group where the pharmacist had been present.

The researchers concluded that a clinical pharmacist provides another layer of safety during a critical time.

The team received one of six ASHP Best Practice Awards for their work.