Hospital pharmacy
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Critical care pharmacists are established and valuable members of the critical care team, however there is rarely written evidence of their daily involvement in the patient's electronic medical record (EMR). Documentation in the EMR has the advantage of ensuring a seamless pass-off and provides an opportunity to capture the pharmacist's cognitive and clinical impact in a way that traditional systems of tracking "interventions" fail to do. We investigated implementation of pharmacist progress notes in a surgical intensive care unit (ICU) and their utility in measuring pharmacist activity. ⋯ The results of this descriptive study demonstrate that the implementation of daily pharmacist progress notes is feasible in an advanced practice setting, and the pharmacist's contribution to patient care may be obtained through review of this documentation in the patient's medical record. The critical care pharmacist's daily involvement in patient care most commonly results in optimization of pharmacotherapy and avoidance of drug misadventure.