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Frank L Vancoillie
PharmD
Hospital Pharmacist
Stedelijk Ziekenhuis Roeselare
Belgium
E:frank.vancoillie@szr.be
The study analysed in this article was carried out by
F Vancoillie, M Depamelaere (Pharm) and R De Smedt (MD).
The Belgian government intends to pass a law mandating the creation of an antibiotic therapy panel in each acute hospital in the country. An expert in antibiotic management should also be appointed.
The project developed by our team emphasises the results of different initiatives to improve antibiotic therapy. If an antibiotic therapy is not in agreement with the directive set out by the Belgian edition of the Sanford Guide (which is used as a basic therapeutic guideline at our hospital in Roeselare), our role is to find out whether a direct intervention from the hospital pharmacist on the decisions made by the medical practitioner could influence the therapeutic process, and, if so, the form this intervention should take.
A method to reduce the cost of antibiotic therapy has been described,(1) which follows two different strategies:
Methods
In our hospital, there is a small stock of the drugs most frequently dispensed in the different nursing wards. The first step to control antibiotic consumption was to remove all the intravenous (IV) antibiotics used in empirical settings from the wards (except in the intensive and coronary care unit). Oral antibiotic therapy and IV prophylaxis were not part of the investigation. The dispensing of antibiotics to each individual patient is based on a medical practitioner’s preprinted prescription document, with a listing of the different antibiotics available. In this document, the medical practitioner indicates the required dose of the antibiotic(s) and its/their medical indication(s) according to the standard classification of the Belgian edition of the Sanford Guide.
The antibiotic formulary list indicates the cost per dose and the total possible minimum and maximum cost per day. This cost is calculated based on the number of vials necessary to provide the adequate therapy for a patient of average bodyweight, treated with the minimum and the maximum dosing schedule per kg.
This project was approved by the medical board of the hospital, and all medical practitioners were informed of the actions that would be undertaken by the pharmacist. The investigation programme was divided into two periods, with succession being restricted to parenteral antibiotics.
In the first period (from 01/11/2002 to 28/02/2003), pharmacists only contacted a medical practitioner when the type of infection or the appropriate indication was unclear or missing, according to the Sanford Guide classification. In the second period (from 01/03/2003 to 31/05/2003), therapy advice took place only if the medical practitioner’s therapy did not conform to:
The pharmacist informed the medical practitioner about the therapy rationale from day 3 onwards, and suggested changes to the therapy for a more appropriate choice of antibiotic, although the medical practitioner could still make his/her final decision according to the patient’s clinical condition.
Collecting data
The prescription document offers the following data (collected in a spreadsheet):
These data were completed with:
Because of the complexity of managing data from patients with more than one indication (infection site), these data were not included in the study.
Problems
The major problems encountered were missing data on the prescription and a prescription written by a medical practitioner not familiar with the patient’s pathology. In this event, the medical practitioner was contacted by phone, although communication can sometimes be a problem. The most time-consuming activities were contacting medical practitioners and collecting additional data, such as laboratory analysis. Another problem was the difficulty to collect data within three days, in particular during weekends and holidays. The results of the study are summarised in Table 1 and Figure 1.
[[HPE17_fig1_67]]
[[HPE17_table1_67]]
Conclusions
This study demonstrates that advice given by a hospital pharmacist has a positive effect, bringing the medical practitioner’s prescription in accordance with the guidelines. During the second period of the study, a higher percentage of therapies were found to be in agreement with bacterial cultures and/or Sanford guidelines. However, the size of this study prevents it from being transformed into a statistical model.
Reference