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Project

Set up of pharmacy-based clinical pharmacy services, the cornerstone for patient safety in Belgium

Clinical validation ('check of medication appropriateness') gains importance in Belgium for the organisation of clinical pharmacy. Patient records are screened electronically for potential inappropriate prescriptions (medication errors), which are then checked by a clinical pharmacist. When a medication error is noticed by the clinical pharmacist, advice is given to the physician. This type of clinical pharmacy makes it possible to deliver pharmacotherapeutic advice to all patients admitted to the hospital, also for those patients where a bedside clinical pharmacist is not available. So far, clinical validation has only been developed for commercially available medicines. Such a validation tool has not yet been developed for pharmaceutical compounds. In this research project we aim to expand the Check of Medication Appropriateness (CMA) tool which has already been developed. The CMA focuses on commercially available medicines. The primary goal is to develop a Check of Compounding Appropriateness (CCA) tool as a subservice of the CMA. In that way, medicines which are not commercially available will also be exposed to a clinical validation step. Through literature search, consensus meetings with professionals on national level and surveys on European level the possible checks on pharmaceutical compound prescriptions by a clinical pharmacist will be investigated. This data will be transmitted to clinical rules within the CCA tool. The clinical rules will screen for potentially inappropriate pharmaceutical compound prescriptions. Secondly, this research project will implement new clinical rules for commercially available drugs in the CMA tool. These will also be formulated after literature search and consensus meetings with professionals. A process validation will be performed on the clinical rules in the CMA and CCA tool. Results will be analysed using the interrupted time series (ITS) method. Third, we aim to include a service for medication related questions within the CMA, in a standardized manner. This service, Centre for Medicines Information (CMI), will be scientifically developed, validated and evaluated. The final goal of this research is to offer a fully operational full time CMA, CCA and CMI service to all hospitalized patients and the involved healthcare practitioners. The outcome of this research project is to be able to screen for medicines related problems by using the CMA and CCA tool and in that way avoid adverse drug events and optimize patients therapy, and to provide adequate information in case of pharmacotherapeutic related questions. 

Date:1 Oct 2021 →  Today
Keywords:PHARMACEUTICAL COMPOUNDING, PHARMACEUTICAL VALIDATION, CLINICAL PHARMACY, HOSPITAL PHARMACY, MEDICINES
Disciplines:Clinical pharmacy, Pharmaceutical care, Pharmacotherapy
Project type:PhD project