Evaluation of the role and usefulness of clinical pharmacists at the
Fangcang hospitals during COVID-19 outbreak
Abstract
Background: Fangcang hospital (cabin hospitals) played a key role in
isolation and control of the infection sources during COVID-19 epidemic.
The patients at Fangcang hospitals were complicated, and many had
different symptoms of COVID-19, some had comorbidities or mental stress,
and many were confused with the drug usages etc. Objective: Due to the
limitation and high work pressure of first line medical workers,
patients’ various problems couldn’t be explained well. Under this
circumstance, online pharmaceutical care was provided by clinical
pharmacists. This study was a retrospective study to evaluate the role
and usefulness of clinical pharmacists at Jianghan Fangcang Hospital.
Besides, this new mode of service was also introduced in detail to
provide options for pharmacists in other hospitals. Methods: The
pharmaceutical care included medication education via broadcast station,
and medication reconciliation, optimization of drug use, monitor of
adverse drug events, and psychological comfort via WeChat® one-to-one
service. In this study, we analyzed patients’ characteristics and drug
usages, concluded almost 200 patients’ problems classified into 6
aspects solved by clinical pharmacists, and also assessed the patients’
satisfaction with our service. Results: The clinical pharmacist help
patients solved almost 200 questions, which mainly focused on the drug
related problems including drug usage (65.38%), medication
reconciliation (55.13%), drug precautions (23.1%), adverse drug
reactions (35.9%), and psychological counseling (32.05%). Through 35
days’ services, Most patients were satisfied with clinical pharmacist
service(66.7%great, 18.0%good). Besides, most patients thought the
service had positive effect on their mental stress(16.7%great,
43.6%good, 26.9%fair). Conclusion: The results of the retrospective
study indicated that clinical pharmacist can effectively reduce and
prevent drug-related, life-related and COVID-19-related problems for
COVID-19 patients. This work may provide possible work patterns for
clinical pharmacist in other hospital and give more professional service
for Fangcang hospital patients.