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.