PubMed · 6138568
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W O Robertson. 1983-10-29. Identifying tablets.. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(83)91009-7
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OBJECTIVES: Thirty years ago, a drug therapy consultation service centre was established simultaneously with the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology based at the university hospital in Magdeburg. The combination of therapeutic drug monitoring and a drug information service including individual patient-oriented drug dosage and bedside consultation permits an effective support of the treatment of drug related therapeutic problems. Currently, the service offers drug monitoring for 161 drugs and additional 46 metabolites. METHODS AND DISCUSSION: In a representative 2-year period (1997-1998), drug monitoring was performed for 6293 patients, and 569 drug-related inquiries were answered. The main categories of required drug information were: pharmacokinetics/metabolism/analytical problems (38%), adverse drug reactions/drug safety (24%), therapeutic drug use/drug indication (21%) and pharmaceuticals (9%). Further activities of the institute refer to teaching of undergraduates, continuing education of local physicians in recent aspects of drug therapy, providing therapeutic bulletins and conducting supporting clinical studies.
OBJECTIVE: To describe the prevalence and nature of hospital pharmacy-based medicine help lines for consumers in the UK and to compare service provision with published guidelines. BACKGROUND: Since 1992, telephone help lines for patients have proliferated in hospital pharmacies in the UK. There is no common template for such services with variations in target group, number and type of calls, and arrangements for training and audit. Data on these factors will help guide further development of such services. METHODS: All medicine help lines operating from hospital pharmacies in the UK were identified through the national Drug Information Pharmacists network. They were sent a piloted questionnaire covering many aspects of help line operation, including funding, method of advertisement, procedures, target group, number and nature of calls, and audit procedures. RESULTS: Eighty-two help lines were identified in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Completed responses were received from 69 help lines (84% response rate). The pharmacy drug information center was the help line site in 57% of hospitals; all other help lines were located in the dispensary. In 55% of cases, help lines were open only to patients of the hospital. In the remainder of help lines, calls from the public were answered (although the majority of help lines only advertised to hospital patients). Calls were answered by pharmacists only in 45% of services, and additional staff training had been provided in 43%. Only 48% of services had written procedures or guidelines for operation of the help line. Forty-six percent of the services received fewer than five calls per week, 31% received between five and 10 calls per week, and 22% received 11 or more calls per week. In 59% of the sites, calls took an average of 10 minutes or less to answer; it took 11-15 minutes in 32% of the sites and >15 minutes in 9% of the sites. The most common queries related to adverse effects, dosage and administration, and interactions (including alcohol). Only 33% of help lines had any auditing or monitoring of the service in place. CONCLUSIONS: The increasing use of the telephone to provide services directly to consumers is reflected in the growth of hospital-based medicine help lines in the UK. The telephone route is likely to become more important as patients' needs for information about their medicines increase. However, the rate of calls is low when compared with the number of patients issued prescriptions; further research is needed to investigate the reasons for this low response. There is currently reason for concern because most help lines lack not only professional training in telephone counseling, but also proper documentation, monitoring, and audit procedures.
The quality of drug-specific information available to consumers on the Internet was studied. The 30 most commonly dispensed prescription drugs were selected to represent those medications for which consumers would be seeking information. A Web page evaluation form was developed to objectively evaluate each site in terms of sponsors, references, recency of updates, ease of use, overall organization, and other characteristics. A second form was developed to qualitatively and quantitatively assess the drug information provided by the sites. Four Internet sites, MedicineNet, RxList, Drug InfoNet, and thriveonline, were evaluated. Authors, contributors, and references were identified for three of the sites. All sites had disclaimers advising patients to seek the advice of a health care professional, all indexed drug information by both brand name and generic name, and all were well organized. Only RxList and MedicineNet contained information on all the drugs evaluated. For the drugs documented, RxList, MedicineNet, Drug InfoNet, and thriveonline contained 84%, 60%, 87%, and 72% of the 22 variables assessed, respectively. The accuracy of the information provided was greater than 98% for all the sites. Only two of four Internet sites containing consumer drug information included all the prescription drugs being evaluated. Most but not all of the information on the four sites was accurate.