Involving pharmacists as prescribers improves prescription accuracy in hospitals

It has been mooted that pharmacists working in hospitals could assume responsibility for prescribing medications to be issued at the time of discharge. A study of conventional (control) prescribing or pharmacist-led prescribing (intervention) has explored this possibility in two phases, including with handwritten prescribing and digital prescribing. The primary outcome was the percentage of patients with a medication error on their discharge prescription. 95% of control patients and 29% in the pharmacist prescribing arm had at least one medication error at discharge (p < 0.0002, RR 0.31, CI 0.16—0.58. Items associated with at least one error reduced from 69 to 4%; p < 0.0001, RR 0.06, CI 0.03—0.11 and fewer items had at least one clinically significant error (11% vs 2%, p = 0.0004, RR 0.15, CI 0.04—0.30). In the second phase (digital prescribing), 100% of control patients and 62% in the intervention arm had at least one medication error (p = 0.005, RR 0.62, CI 0.44—0.87). Items with at least 1 error decreased from 21 to 7% (p < 0.0001, RR 0.34, CI 0.44—0.56), there were fewer items with at least 1 clinically significant error (13% vs 5%, p < 0.003, RR 0.4, CI 0.22—0.72). It seems that this model of practice enhances safety and could also yield other benefits (e.g. cost-effective care and diminished medicolegal liability). See more details here.