In-house pharmacists can help GPs reduce prescribing errors by up to 50 percent
February 20, 2012 in Medications
Medication errors are common in primary care but the number of mistakes could be reduced significantly if GPs introduced an in-house pharmacist-led intervention scheme.
These are the findings of a comprehensive study into sustainable ways of preventing patients from being harmed as a result of prescribing errors.
The research was led by Tony Avery, Professor of Primary Health Care in the School of Community Health Sciences at The University of Nottingham and funded by the Patient Safety Research Program of the UK Department of Health. The results are published on Tuesday 21 February 2012 in the Lancet - one of the world's leading medical journals.
The study involved at-risk patients in 72 general practices taking the drugs that are most commonly and consistently associated with medication errors.
The general practices were randomly allocated to receive either computerised feedback on patients at risk, or computerised feedback with support from a pharmacist to correct any errors detected. When followed up six months later the general practices receiving pharmacist support had significantly fewer prescribing errors.
Professor Avery, who is also a practicing GP in Nottingham, has called on the Department of Health and GP clinical commissioning groups to develop a wider roll-out of the intervention scheme. He said: "Our study has shown remarkable reductions in prescribing errors from an approach that could easily be rolled out to general practices in England and the rest of the UK. Most general practices already have in-house pharmacists, but much of their time is spent controlling prescribing costs. What is needed is a commitment for these pharmacists to spend more of their time on patient safety. Not only would this help prevent unnecessary harm to patients, but it may also reduce the costs associated with dealing with prescribing errors, which sometimes require hospital admission".
How the study was set up
Dr Avery and his team, which involved the University of Manchester, the University of Reading, the University of Otago in New Zealand, and the University of Edinburgh, studied GP practices in Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and Central and Eastern Cheshire, England.
Practices allocated to the simple feedback system received computerised feedback on patients at risk from medication errors and the practices were given brief written information on the importance of each type of error.
GPs allocated to pharmacist-intervention met with a pharmacist at the beginning of intervention period to discuss the problems identified from the computerised feedback and to agree on an action plan. The pharmacist then spent roughly two days a week for the next 12 weeks dealing with the problems and working to improve safety systems. In some cases, patients were invited into the surgery for a prescription review with the pharmacist, or a GP, or to have a blood test, with the aim of correcting medication errors.
The results of the study
Their results showed that GPs were almost 50 per cent less likely to make errors in the monitoring of older people taking ACE inhibitors or diuretics, 42 per cent less likely to make errors in prescribing non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs to patients with a history of peptic ulcer (including stomach ulcer), and 27 per cent less likely to make errors in prescribing beta-blockers to patients with asthma.
Professor Avery said: "We know that GPs are aware of the risks of the drugs most commonly associated with adverse events, but errors do occur and our study has shown an effective way of dealing with them. We believe that there is an urgent need to roll out this pharmacist-led intervention to general practices throughout the country to avoid unnecessary errors in the future."
Provided by
University of Nottingham
-
Wide-reaching report finds strong support for nurse and pharmacist prescribing
May 10, 2011 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Physicians click their way to better prescriptions
Mar 10, 2010 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Thousands of patients prescribed high-risk drugs
Jun 22, 2011 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Commercial electronic prescribing systems can reduce medication errors in hospital patients
Jan 31, 2012 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Study: E-prescribing cuts medication errors by seven-fold
Mar 31, 2010 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Motion perception revisited: High Phi effect challenges established motion perception assumptions
Apr 23, 2013 |
3 / 5 (2) |
2
-
Anything you can do I can do better: Neuromolecular foundations of the superiority illusion (Update)
Apr 02, 2013 |
4.5 / 5 (11) |
5
-
The visual system as economist: Neural resource allocation in visual adaptation
Mar 30, 2013 |
5 / 5 (2) |
9
-
Separate lives: Neuronal and organismal lifespans decoupled
Mar 27, 2013 |
4.9 / 5 (8) |
0
-
Sizing things up: The evolutionary neurobiology of scale invariance
Feb 28, 2013 |
4.8 / 5 (10) |
14
-
Pressure-volume curve: Elastic Recoil Pressure don't make sense
May 18, 2013
-
If you became brain-dead, would you want them to pull the plug?
May 17, 2013
-
MRI bill question
May 15, 2013
-
Ratio of Hydrogen of Oxygen in Dessicated Animal Protein
May 13, 2013
-
Alcohol and acetaminophen
May 13, 2013
-
Marie Curie's leukemia
May 13, 2013
- More from Physics Forums - Medical Sciences
More news stories
Acne pill benefits outweigh blood clot risk: EU agency
Europe's medicines watchdog said Friday the benefits of acne drug Diane-35, also widely used as a contraceptive, outweigh the risk of developing blood clots in the veins—when correctly prescribed.
Medications
May 17, 2013 |
not rated yet |
0
First influenza vaccine brought to clinical testing
Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and Switzerland's Cytos Biotechnology AG today announced that the first healthy volunteer has been dosed in a Phase 1 clinical trial with their ...
Medications
May 17, 2013 |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
Aspirin not always best treatment for many individuals
(Medical Xpress)—An aspirin a day may not always keep heart disease away, say two University of Florida cardiologists. But a new algorithm they have developed outlines factors physicians should weigh as ...
Medications
May 16, 2013 |
3.5 / 5 (2) |
0
|
FDA: lower ambien's dose to prevent drowsy driving
(HealthDay)—The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved new, lower-dose labeling for the popular sleep drug Ambien (zolpidem) in an effort to cut down on daytime drowsiness that could be a hazard ...
Medications
May 15, 2013 |
not rated yet |
0
Simponi approved for ulcerative colitis
(HealthDay)—Simponi (golimumab) injection has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat adults with moderate-to-severe ulcerative colitis.
Medications
May 15, 2013 |
not rated yet |
0
Blame your parents for bunion woes
A novel study reports that white men and women of European descent inherit common foot disorders, such as bunions (hallux valgus) and lesser toe deformities, including hammer or claw toe. Findings from the Framingham Foot ...
Whole-cell vaccine was more effective than acellular vaccine during CA pertussis outbreak
Whole-cell pertussis vaccines were more effective at protecting against pertussis than acellular pertussis vaccines during a large recent outbreak, according to a new Kaiser Permanente study published in Pediatrics.
Commonly used catheters double risk of blood clots in ICU and cancer patients
Touted for safety, ease and patient convenience, peripherally inserted central catheters have become many clinicians' go-to for IV delivery of antibiotics, nutrition, chemotherapy, and other medications.
Molecular marker from pancreatic 'juices' helps identify pancreatic cancer
Researchers at Mayo Clinic have developed a promising method to distinguish between pancreatic cancer and chronic pancreatitis—two disorders that are difficult to tell apart. A molecular marker obtained from pancreatic ...
New theory on genesis of osteoarthritis comes with successful therapy in mice
Scientists at Johns Hopkins have turned their view of osteoarthritis (OA) inside out. Literally. Instead of seeing the painful degenerative disease as a problem primarily of the cartilage that cushions joints, ...
Computational tool translates complex data into simplified 2-dimensional images
In their quest to learn more about the variability of cells between and within tissues, biomedical scientists have devised tools capable of simultaneously measuring dozens of characteristics of individual ...