الفهرس 
Clinical Pharmacists RolesOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Clinical pharmacist’s (C. Ph.) role is not yet well recognized among some health care professionals.
This study aimed to measure physicians’ perceptions towards clinical pharmacists and factors affecting such perception at Al-Ahrar teaching hospital. In this study,we also estimated the proportions of the different physicians’ responses to clinical pharmacists’ recommendations regarding drug-related problems (DRPs) and medication errors.
A cross-sectional study was conducted using a convenience sample of physicians at clinical departments using a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of four sections physicians’ interactions, perceptions, and perceived barriers in addition to a demographic section. A total of 134 physicians responded to it, of whom 60 of had clinical pharmacists in their departments.
In this study, the interaction between Physicians and Clinical Pharmacists where Clinical pharmacist is available was more frequent for all aspects such as drug doses, drug alternatives drug availability drug interactions and side effects. In the absence of clinical pharmacist, physicians had more requests of the regular pharmacists about both drug availability and dosage.
Physicians in departments with and without C Ph had similar perceptions of C Ph role. Most physicians expected pharmacists to be potential source of drug information (96%) and the drug interaction (89%).
According to physicians, main barriers to the collaboration with clinical pharmacists were unclear C Ph responsibilities and lack of awareness of the benefits of having a clinical pharmacist.
In this study, 491 patient files were examined by clinical pharmacists for detection of DRPs and physician’s response for clinical pharmacist recommendations. ICU prescriptions of 182 patients patients included 378 DRPs averaging 2 Drug related problem per patient, of which 361 were also considered medication errors.
The study presented the proportion of acceptance of the receiving physicians to the clinical pharmacists DRPs recommendation with drug interaction (100%), Needs drug (77.4%), dosing regimen (75.3%). The acceptance rate was 88.6%, 71.6% and 40.8% for internal medicine, cardiology and emergency ICUs respectively. Physicians with shorter experience of 5 years or less showed a higher acceptance compared to those with longer experience.
Better physicians’ orientation about C. Ph. functions and clarification of C. Ph. responsibilities may improve physician-C. Ph. collaboration. There is also a need to research interventions with potential to improve physicians’ response to clinical pharmacists’ recommendations, especially in critical care.