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Increasing patient safety due to an implemented ward pharmacist in an interprofessional cancer care team evaluated in a prospective, controlled intervention study

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Abstract

Background

Pharmacists can improve quality of cancer care and patient quality of life, but systematical investigations of the quantitative improvement of patient safety by integrated ward pharmacists (WP) in cancer care teams are still rare.

Aim

To systematically investigate the effect of an implemented ward pharmacist on the reduction of medication errors (ME) and thus increasing patient safety.

Methods

P0 (retrospective control phase) forms the baseline with no pharmaceutical intervention. In P1 and P2 (prospective intervention phases) WP acted as a team member, performing interventions, and solving ME as part of the daily routine. Throughout all phases, two pharmacists independently identified all remaining ME from archived patient files. ME were considered as clinically relevant after confirmation by an oncologist.

Results

The three phases with 52, 46, and 50 patients, respectively, were comparable regarding the baseline characteristics. For better comparability, ME refer to the number of monitored medications (MM) corresponding to one drug per day. The statistical analysis showed a significant reduction of clinically relevant ME for all intervention phases compared with the retrospective control phase (P0: 33 MEs/100 MM versus P1: 7 MEs/100 MM versus P2: 2 MEs/100 MM; p < 0.001).

Conclusions

Implementation of a WP significantly reduced ME and, consequently, increased quality of cancer treatment as well as patient safety. Thus, the contribution of a WP to the interprofessional team is crucial for enabling comprehensive cancer patient care.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge Martin Mogk, moreDATA GmbH, for performing statistical analyses and Emma J. Esser for carefully proofreading the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pharmacy, Klinikum Fulda gAG, Pacelliallee 4, 36043, Fulda, Germany

    Svenja Dierkes, Annette Freidank & Roland Radziwill

  2. Institute of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany

    Svenja Dierkes & Carsten Culmsee

  3. Tumorklinik, Klinikum Fulda gAG, Fulda, Germany

    Heinz-Gert Höffkes

Authors
  1. Svenja Dierkes
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  2. Annette Freidank
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  5. Roland Radziwill
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Svenja Dierkes.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval

The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Medical Chamber Hesse (2020-1560-evBO).

Conflicts of interest

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Funding

The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript.

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Not applicable.

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Not applicable.

Availability of data and material (data transparency)

The data that support the findings of this study are not openly available owing to reasons of sensitivity and are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

Not applicable.

Author’s contributions

AF, CC, HGH, RR and SD designed the underlying research question. AF and SD collected, analyzed, and verified the underlying data reported in this manuscript. All authors had full access to all the data in the study and accepted responsibility to submit for publication. SD created figures and tables and drafted the manuscript. AF, CC, HGH and RR, critically reviewed the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Dierkes, S., Freidank, A., Culmsee, C. et al. Increasing patient safety due to an implemented ward pharmacist in an interprofessional cancer care team evaluated in a prospective, controlled intervention study. Drugs Ther Perspect 40, 151–159 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40267-024-01057-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40267-024-01057-w

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