The Annals of pharmacotherapy
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Clinical Trial
Medication reconciliation performed by pharmacy technicians at the time of preoperative screening.
Medication errors occur regularly in surgical patients, especially due to transfer problems at the time of hospital admission. A method for decreasing the error rate is medication reconciliation by hospital pharmacists as part of a preoperative clinic. The role of pharmacy technicians in this process has not been studied. ⋯ The results of this study show that pharmacy technicians can be successfully assigned to a preoperative clinic, resulting in a statistically significant decrease in medication discrepancies.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
Effectiveness of valsartan for treatment of hypertension: patient profiling and hierarchical modeling of determinants and outcomes (the PREVIEW study).
Patient- and clinician-related factors may explain variability in blood pressure (BP) outcomes and the differences between real-world effectiveness and efficacy seen in randomized trials of antihypertensive agents. ⋯ Valsartan is effective and well tolerated in a broad range of patients in whom first-line antihypertensive treatment failed or was not tolerated. Mitigating the impact of BP-elevating variables and optimizing the effect of BP-lowering factors provides therapeutic benefits incremental to valsartan's pharmacologic effect. Improving outcomes in hypertensive patients involves 3 steps: (1) identifying, intuitively rather than formally, patients less likely to achieve BP control; (2) targeting modifiable or manageable patient- and physician-level determinants with BP-elevating or BP-lowering effects; and (3) managing variables that increase the odds and optimizing those that lower the odds of uncontrolled BP.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Community pharmacist-provided extended diabetes care.
Pharmacists in various settings have been effective in initiating diabetes treatment. Patients with diabetes require ongoing disease management, and community pharmacists are in a strategic position to provide such extended care. Little is known, however, about the effects of community pharmacist-provided interventions beyond the initial treatment period. ⋯ Although pharmacist-provided interventions did not demonstrate statistically significant improvements in clinical outcomes over the study period, study results did show that pharmacists were effective at increasing the number of days that patients spent engaging in healthy diet and diabetes self-care activities. Addressing lifestyle and self-care behaviors can be a beneficial component of a pharmacist-provided extended diabetes care service.
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With Canadians increasing their use of the Internet to find health-related information, especially regarding natural health products (NHPs), there is a need for high-quality, evidence-based information on Web sites to aid consumers in making informed decisions regarding the appropriate and safe use of NHPs. ⋯ Due to the poor quality and content from unknown sources found on some Web sites, consumers who access Web sites for information regarding the use of NHPs in osteoporosis should do so cautiously and discuss results with their healthcare providers.
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A self-reporting questionnaire is the most convenient and cheapest way to assess medication adherence. A new 8-item self-reported Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS) has been developed and has shown better psychometric properties than the original 4-item Morisky scale. ⋯ The 8-item MMAS can be a tool to aid in assessing medication adherence in diabetes. The poor sensitivity can be improved by increasing the number of the response choices and the cut-off score of the scale and by using specific words in some items. A modified Thai version of the 8-item MMAS may be needed.