International journal of clinical pharmacy
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Clinical pharmacy in a hospital setting is relatively new in Sweden. Its recent introduction at the University Hospital in Uppsala has provided an opportunity for evaluation by other relevant professionals of the integration of clinical pharmacists into the health-care team. ⋯ The majority of the respondents, both GPs and hospital based physicians and nurses, were satisfied with the new collaboration with the ward based pharmacists and perceived that the quality of the patients' drug therapy and drug-related patient safety had increased.
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Appropriate prescribing is fundamental to successful pharmacotherapy. The status of current ambulatory medication practices in medicine and pharmacy would be better understood through an analysis of community pharmacy prescription claims. ⋯ Prescription errors are prevalent in ambulatory care in Taiwan, and differential practice standards exist between community and hospital services. This disparity needs to be reconciled by pertinent initiatives to enhance community-hospital and pharmacist-general practitioner communication and interprofessional educational efforts to improve medication use and safety.
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There is a need to expand clinical pharmacy services to cover the ambulatory pediatric cancer patients. There is a paucity of published literature describing pharmacy services in this setting. ⋯ Developing pediatric hematology-oncology clinical pharmacy services to cover the outpatient setting is essential to ensure continuity of care and to optimize therapeutics.
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With increasing deregulation of prescription-only medicines and drive for self-care, pharmacists have greater scope to manage more conditions. This brings added responsibility to be competent healthcare professionals who deliver high quality evidence-based patient care. ⋯ Safety was the primary concern when making decisions about over-the counter medicines. Pharmacists lacked knowledge of evidence-based practice and considered medicines which lacked evidence of effectiveness to have an important role in self-care. These factors present barriers to the widespread implementation of evidence-based practice.