Seminar B3: The growing role of hospital pharmacists in the outpatient setting

Link to EAHP statements:
Section 4: Clinical Pharmacy Services

ACPE UAN: 0475-0000-17-018-L04-P. A knowledge based activity.

Abstract 

Clinical pharmacy services in the outpatient setting have experienced great changes in the past years and it looks like they will only continue to expand. Hospital pharmacists working in the ambulatory care scenario have become experts in the treatment of solid tumours and haematological malignancies with oral drugs, HCV infection with direct-acting antiviral agents, multiple sclerosis with recently marketed oral treatments, etc., and the pipeline is full of new options that will probably continue to be high-cost and complex.

Keeping up to date on evidence-based treatment guidelines and selecting with the physician the right treatment option for each patient is becoming a common practice for pharmacists. Access to these drugs on occasions will also need special involvement of the hospital pharmacist and can be a critical step that will play an important part in the success of the treatment plan. Once the drug is available, providing counselling on potential adverse events, avoiding interactions with other treatments, educating patients on the importance of adherence, monitoring response and appearance of toxicities, recommending dose adjustments, or even the end of treatment when the patient meets stop criteria are some, but not all, of the clinical activities in which hospital pharmacists are engaged with patients that are not in the hospital’s “controlled environment”.

But will we be able to manage these growing roles without changing the way we do things?

Finally, the patient’s individual needs should be analysed to understand the limited resources we have and how to get the most out of them in terms of health outcomes. It may be needed to switch to a new model that is centred in an active patient, instead of the traditional treatment-centred model, and even clinical services may need to be offered in a different degree among patients treated with the same drug based on each patient’s necessities.

Learning objectives

After the seminar, the participant should be able to:
• provide examples of clinical services that can be offered to outpatients in their own hospital; 
• analyse if these services cover the needs of their own patients, if they are obtaining the outcomes that are expected and to identify improvement areas.

Keywords: Outpatient, clinical pharmacy services.

* No conflict of interest has been declared.