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. 2019 Aug;35(4):155-163.
doi: 10.1177/8755122519843013. Epub 2019 Apr 17.

Naturalistic Evaluation of Pharmacotherapy Consultations Provided to Hospital Clinicians: A Developing Country's Perspective

Gaurav Garg  1 , Amol Patil  1 , Kripa Shanker Kasudhan  1
Affiliations

Naturalistic Evaluation of Pharmacotherapy Consultations Provided to Hospital Clinicians: A Developing Country's Perspective

Gaurav Garg et al. J Pharm Technol. 2019 Aug.

Abstract

Background: Critical appraisal of published literature for hospital clinicians has never been taken as an initiative in developing countries. Objective: This study was aimed at evaluating the nature of pharmacotherapy consultations from the drug information center (DIC) of the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India. Methods: The DIC received pharmacotherapy consultation requests from January 2016 to December 2017. Various aspects such as clinical queries, patient-related factors, and disease-related information in these requests were recorded and analyzed. Descriptive statistics and χ2 test were used for the analysis of the data and feedback evaluation, respectively. Results: During the study, a total of 179 consultation requests were documented. On 19 (10.61%) encounters, pharmacotherapy consultations occurred for emergency patient care. Of the 179 queries, 31 (17.3%) were answered immediately while 148 (82.68%) were answered within an average time of 1.6 hours. The most common type of query was the pharmacotherapy of disease, followed by dose calculation and dose modification. Communications with DIC staff took place for timely critical appraisal of the medical literature, followed by a judicious selection of higher antimicrobials and other drugs. The time taken for answering a query was found to be a statistically significant determinant of user satisfaction (P < .05). Conclusion: The evidence level-specific drug information service was established and catered to hospital clinicians through critical evaluation of offline and online resources. DIC services have the potential to revolutionize the pharmacy and pharmacology curriculum in developing countries.

Keywords: Drug information Center; critical appraisal of literature; curriculum; drug information; evidence-based medicine; pharmacology; pharmacy.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
The spectrum of services possible from a fully functional drug information center.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
The type of queries asked by clinical discipline doctors.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Common references that were utilized while providing evidence-based information.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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