[Analysis of the question-answer activity of a hospital pharmacy. Example of the handling of drug interactions]

Abstract

Introduction: The medical care of patients generates questions among healthcare professionals. Some will necessitate an advanced research. The hospital pharmacist is at the interface between prescribers, caregivers and the medicines and is requested to answer these requests. Studies conducted in other countries showed that this question-answer activity represents a significant amount of time in daily work. In France, this topic was poorly explored. The objective of our work was to study the volume and the type of questions, the clinical situations, the time required, the medicines implicated and the sources of information used.

Materials and methods: A prospective study was conducted in the pharmacy of a university hospital. All the requests answered by the pharmaceutical team, which needed a specific research, analysis and writing of an answer were collected.

Results: A hundred and one questions were analyzed, originating from doctors or medicals interns. Almost half concerned drug interactions, and among them, almost a fourth were not mentioned in the Summary of Product Characteristics of the medicines involved. A pharmaceutical advice was provided in 91.5% of the cases. Time dedicated to the research varied between less than 30 minutes and more than 8 hours.

Discussion and conclusion: This study illustrates the question-answer activity of a hospital pharmacy, which is currently not taken into account as an indicator of pharmaceutical activity. A large part concerns analysis and management of drug interactions and requires a significant amount of pharmaceutical time.

Keywords: Clinical pharmacy; Drug interactions; Hospital; Hôpital; Information pharmaceutique; Interactions médicamenteuses; Interventions pharmaceutiques; Pharmaceutical information; Pharmaceutical interventions; Pharmacie clinique.