Discussion
Clinical Pharmacists are the guardians of safety medication of the
patient’s all the time. Due to the unique circumstances of Fangcang
Hospital, clinical pharmacists were recommended to preform no-contact
pharmaceutical care, which hindered the efficient and timely service for
patients. The online pharmaceutical care service is often provided in
places where clinical pharmacists unavailable15-16. A
variety of technologies, models of care are used to develop and provide
remote services, serving diversified populations with different
pathological conditions[16]. However, the
experiences on patients at Fangcang hospitals are rare. Recently,
implementation of pharmaceutical care for patients at Jianghan Fangcang
Hospital has been established during the COVID-19 outbreak. The goals of
pharmaceutical care services were to improve medication safety and
optimize clinical treatment outcomes and disease prognosis. This study
was a retrospective research to analyze the clinical pharmacists’ roles
in the Fangcang hospital. This study showed that, many patients had
various initiate symptoms, and some had chronic diseases or mental
stress, making the treatment complicated and difficult. The drugs were
also complicated including different kinds of antivirals, antibiotics
and other agents, which often confused patients with the drug selection,
drug dose, drug interaction and adverse reactions. Obviously, reduction
in medication errors include drug interactions, adverse drug reactions
following the suggestion of clinical pharmacists at Fangcang hospital
has been shown to have a positive impact on COVID-19 patients.
Therefore, it is particularly important to provide pharmaceutical care
for patients to ensure safe and rational use of drugs.
From data of the questionnaire for 78 discharged patients, we found many
patients(48.7%) contacted clinical pharmacists frequently at least once
a day, and only a few patients (14.0%) contacted clinical pharmacist
once a week( the lowest frequency), which indicated that our clinical
pharmacists are in need for patients at Fangcang hospital. Through
continuous instruction of pharmacist inpatient service, patients’
concerns about medication can be alleviated. 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%). We also
found that 59.0% patients had insomnia, 42.3% patients were anxious,
and 28.2%patients were afraid, 20.5% depressed and 10.3%irritable
when they stayed at Fangcang hospital.
Our study also revealed that, through continued guidance, many patients
gained a better understanding of the drug indications, drug interaction
and adverse reactions. Moreover, like previous studies report on the
introduction of clinical pharmacists services with a high satisfactory
(>80%) and acceptance rate, most of patients in Fangcang
hospital were satisfied with clinical pharmaceutical care and thought
service was necessary and helpful during their COVID-19
treatment8-10. Besides, the patients’ recognition of
the pharmacist has greatly improved. All these data indicated that our
online mode of novel pharmaceutical care service for patients at
Fangcang hospital was safe, effective, and acceptable to COVID-19
patients. Some advices are also provided herein:(1)Online pharmaceutical
care service mode should be established not only to COVID-19 patients
but also to the general population as necessary; (2)Taken on heavy
responsibility of drug safety guardians, pharmaceutical servicer and
drug supplier, the clinical pharmacists in preventing the spread of
COVID-19 should be strengthened.