Pharmaceutical interventions in an emergency department

Abstract

Describe medication-related problems (MRPs) evidencing the importance of clinical pharmacist in emergency room (ER). Retrospective study in which we quantified and analyzed pharmacy resident interventions on medical prescriptions on emergency room at Hospital Regional de Mato Grosso do Sul. During the study, we accompanied 136 patients. Among these patients, about 30,1% required at least one intervention at some moment of their hospitalization, comprising 159 MRPs related to 42 medications in 22 workdays and representing 7,22 problems per day. There was necessity to adjust dosage in 17,1% of the cases, 5% of the MRPs were unnecessary medications, 6,3% the therapeutic alternative was not the most adequate or the non-standardized medication prescription, 48,4% were potentially dangerous drug-drug or drug-food interactions and 24,2% were incompatibilities or physical chemistry instabilities. The analysis of the obtained results suggests that pharmaceutical interventions in emergency department is an effective and necessary tool to detect and prevent avoidable MRPs and may collaborate to improve medication usage quality and patients safety in this clinical unity.