The hospital pharmacist’s role in medicines management was recognised as long ago as 1955 in the Linstead report on hospital pharmacy.
History
The hospital
pharmacist’s role in medicines management was recognised as long ago as 1955 in
the Linstead report on hospital pharmacy. In this report the role of the
hospital pharmacy included:
·
to assist in the development of new methods of treatment
·
to promote economy in the use of medical supplies
·
to assist in efficient prescribing by advising upon the
nature and properties of medicaments, and selection of the most suitable
substances and the form in which they should be prescribed.
These principles
remain true today, particularly as both the range and com-plexity of medicines
have increased enormously. In the intervening years, milestone reports such as
the Nuffield report in 1986, the Department of Health circular on clinical
pharmacy in 1988, Pharmacy in the Future in 2000 and the Audit Commission
report on medicines management in hos-pital reinforced the role of the hospital
pharmacist at the centre of medicines management. More recently, the General
Medical Council’s own research identified that almost 10% of prescriptions
written by junior doctors con-tained errors: these were only prevented from
reaching the patient by other healthcare staff, primarily hospital pharmacists.
Although systems to
manage prescribing have a longer history in hospital than in primary care, more
attention has focused on primary care prescribing costs with more central
initiatives (for example, practice detailed prescribing information (PDPI) data
(previously called PACT data), primary care trust (PCT) pharmaceutical advisers
and general practice incentive schemes). This is not surprising since in 2000
the majority of NHS expenditure on medicines was in primary care. However, we
have noted that more recently secondary care prescribing costs have been the
larger area of growth.
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