Abstract
Background Pharmacists have a key role in patient safety. However, there are gaps in the literature around their interventions and impact in paediatric out-of-hours care.
Aim This study aimed to identify and assess the impact of pharmacist interventions on inpatient care at a tertiary paediatric centre during out-of-hours shifts.
Method A retrospective study was conducted using data from an out-of-hours pharmacist intervention database at the study site (a paediatric hospital) in the North West of England. Data was drawn from a sample of convenience of 406 entries, recorded over a 5-month period. Pseudo anonymised data was categorised by intervention, ranked by severity, and simple statistics performed using MSExcel.
Results Nine different intervention categories were identified, with most including subcategories, showing a wide range of pharmacist out-of-hours tasks including maintenance, medicines information enquiries, and therapeutic drug monitoring. Out of 404 interventions ranked, 91% (N= 368) were found to lead to an improvement in patient care. No interventions were classed as causing detriment to patient care, or directly leading to life-saving actions. Cost of error avoidance against rate paid per out-of-hours intervention was calculated to be ten-fold, proving the value for enhanced rates paid to pharmacists during hours of lower staffing levels.
Conclusion Pharmacists at a paediatric tertiary care centre have proved valuable through their out-of-hours interventions recording using a number of assessments to validate the results from this snapshot study. This research contributes to the existing gap in the literature, and will inform future similar studies.
