Clinical Pharmacy/ Pharmacology practice is a health science discipline in which clinical pharmacists and Pharmacologist / Pharmacy practicing doctors provide patient care that optimizes medication therapy and promotes health. Though this unique clinical service has been established in different developed countries .But earlier in West Bengal including large parts of Eastern India, Pharmacists in a Hospital were limited to a number of services like Drug Dispensing and Maintenance of stocks and records. But no detailed Idea of Clinical pharmacy/pharmacology practice including drug information services for direct patient care and research.
The evolution in the Clinical Pharmacy setting of our state has already started in current days in RGH. In this new approach medication related care has been provided in hospital in-patients and also after discharge. In hospitals different new approaches have been established like dosage modification, drug drug interaction prevention, drug contraindications, Adverse reaction monitoring & prevention, Drug food interaction information and different clinical issues identification and prevention related to medication practice .Also a new system of pharmacological counseling has been started which will help patients for better understanding for safe practice of his/or her medicine. Like some food may interact with drugs and cause undesirable action, drug information for breastfeeding or pregnancy etc so there are several things that can be explained to patients in very simple language by well trained Clinical pharmacist or Pharmacy practicing doctor to improve treatment quality and patient safety. Which was very unknown to our community as well as in the health care system.
The Organization also established an In-house Drug information services (Under clinical pharmacology department) has also started to provide medication related information to our staff and patients for rational use of medication, which is a milestone of clinical pharmacy and pharmacology service in our state like other developed countries. For any medication information related service patient’s pharmacological counseling, on-call drug information system, email information services have also been started for RGH patients and staff. Because the patients are discharged with sufficient medicines, but after reaching home they have a lot of queries about consumption of drugs. We will explain to them in simple general language and if the question needs discussion with concerned doctors, we will do it and pass the information on to the patients. If the question is exclusively on pharmacology related matters.
Individualized counseling of patents , rational approach, Patient education
Drug information through mail, what’s app and on call services to the patients
More than 900 discharge patients were benefited by this unique and modern drug information including information about food drug interaction services provided by clinical pharmacology department of ruby hospital.