Collaborative attitudes between pharmacists and physicians in Brazil

Abstract Pharmacist-physician collaboration is a strategy for optimizing patient care and improving health outcomes. Nevertheless, there is a lack of information in Brazil about collaborative practices among these professionals. The aim of this study was to measure collaborative attitude of pharmacists and physicians who were working together in a teaching hospital. A cross-sectional study was conducted from June 2018 to January 2019 with pharmacists and physicians working in a teaching hospital in Northeastern Brazil. These professionals were invited to provide responses to the Brazilian version of the "Scale of Attitudes Towards Pharmacist-Physician Collaboration" (SATP2C); their scores ranged between 16 and 64 points. The software Epi Info TM (version 3.5.4) was used for data analysis, and data were expressed in means. Forty-four professionals participated in this study. The mean age was 33.5 (DP = 7.1) years. More than half of participants were male (n = 25, 56.8%). The means from the SATP2C for pharmacists and physicians were 54.20 and 50.91, respectively, indicating good collaborative attitudes. There was no statistical difference between the mean scores of pharmacists and physicians. Participants showed a predisposition for collaborative teamwork. Future studies should focus on understanding the process by which collaboration translates into clinical practice

Pharmaceutical intervention assessment in the identification and management of drug interactions in an intensive care unit.

It is estimated there are thousands of combinations of drugs, which may generate various adverse drug events, including drug interactions (DI). To assess the contribution of pharmacist to identification and management of DI in an intensive care unit (ICU). A longitudinal study was conducted in the ICU of a private hospital in the city of Aracaju-SE, between 2008 and 2009. The prevalence and clinical relevance of DI was assessed by two clinical pharmacists. Demographic data and clinical information of patients hospitalized in the period of the study were obtained from medical records. At the end of the study 137 medical records were analyzed, with a predominance of female patients (55.4%), average age of 66 (±7.0) years. 6,085 prescriptions were collected during the study period, in which 2,455 drugs prescribed. Of these, 175 prescriptions contained clinically relevant DI, 178 of moderate severity and 35 of major severity, 213 DI in total. The clinical pharmacists prepared reports for the physicians, which enabled the reduction of 40% of all DI. Data from this study suggest that pharmacist’s contribution may have reduced the incidence of DI, providing more familiarity of physicians on clinically relevant information and improving the quality of prescriptions in the ICU.