Jerry Fahrni

Pharmacists aren’t completely worthless after all.

Written by

Jerry Fahrni

in

An article in the most recent issue of Archives of Internal Medicine reports the results of adding a pharmacist to a health care team to offer up expertise on appropriate use of medication in heart failure and hypertension.

The results showed a 35% reduction in adverse drug events, a 48% reduction in preventable adverse drug events and a 37% reduction in medication errors. They did not analyze the economic impact. However, medication errors occur in at least 1.5 million people annually and add somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.5 billion a year to the cost of healthcare.

Now, about that raise….

Comments

3 responses to “Pharmacists aren’t completely worthless after all.”

  1. laura

    So this is a Clinical Pharmacist or a centralized pharmacist???
    Raise?! oh come on…..

  2. Jerry

    @laura
    All pharmacist by nature are considered “clinical”, and make interventions on a routine basis. The major difference is their practice environment.

    The article mentioned above was the result of two separate studies conducted at an outpatient clinic on the campus of Indiana University School of Medicine (Wishard Health Services).

    As part of the study, pharmacists conducted a comprehensive medication history and medication assessment at baseline. Each patient was then randomly assigned to a group with no pharmacist or to a group with a pharmacist that gave routine feedback and education to the patient.

    As for the raise…just a little joke. I suppose I need to work on my sarcastic typing.

    Thanks for visiting, Laura.

  3. Laura

    @Jerry

    Ok…you are being a bit too serious. Noone has to convince any Registered Nurse of the value a Pharmacist brings to the medical team. I don’t need a scholarly article to prove to me that a Pharmacist adds value. In my opinion, you are imperative to a good clinical outcome for the patient. Pharmacy has also been my friend, you should know that Jerry Fahrni. My reference was in regard to a centralized model versus the decentralized model (of pharmacy).

    By the way, I know you were joking – I was too….

    Thanks for replying, Jerry.

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