NPSA recommends anticoagulant role for pharmacy
Antonia Reeve/Science Photo Library
Testing blood clotting: pharmacists should have a greater role in
providing care for anticoagulant patients |
Pharmacists could play a greater role in the provision of anticoagulant care, new recommendations from the National Patient Safety Agency and the British Committee for Standards in Haematology suggest.
The recommendations, entitled “Safety indicators for inpatient
and outpatient oral anticoagulant care” and published this week,
follow an NPSA risk assessment, which suggested a number of steps that
could be taken to improve safety. These included “potential greater
use of nurses and pharmacists to provide anticoagulant care, especially
for hospital inpatients and for improving links between inpatient and
outpatient services”. The recommendations are available from the
BCSH guidelines
website
Commenting on the recommendations, Noel Dixon, who runs an anticoagulation
clinic from his community pharmacy in Stanley, County Durham, said: “The
recommendations should be welcomed as a first step towards improving
patient care. However, most of the strategies listed are too general
for primary care trusts to be able to implement at the moment. Not many
standards have been described for the safety indicators. We look forward
to future discussions that will provide us with specific guidelines.”
Rosalind Perrott, senior pharmacist, anticoagulation and haematology,
at King’s College Hospital, London commented: “These guidelines
are particularly useful as they focus on the practicalities of safe
anticoagulation and provide distinct criteria for monitoring the safety
of anticoagulation services.”
She added: “The recommendation for greater use of pharmacists in
the provision of anticoagulation care for hospital in-patients acknowledges
the impact experienced pharmacists can make in improving the safety of
this service. This will hopefully enable resources
to be made available to allow more widespread development of pharmacy-led
inpatient anticoagulation services”. |
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