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Journal of Medical Education

Abstract

Postgraduate year (PGY) pharmacy programs can help pharmacists learn various clinical skills. However, information on the effectiveness of such programs is limited. Purpose: To determine the effectiveness of a series of prescription interpretation courses taken by PGY2 pharmacists on different types of interventions and cost avoidance. Methods: An observational data review on interventions by PGY2 pharmacists was conducted. The PGY2 pharmacist records included outpatient, emergency, and inpatient prescriptions. The pre-and post-training data were collected within 6 and between 13-18 months after employing pharmacists, respectively, and analyzed for professional knowledge score, types of pharmacist recommendations, rate of acceptance by physicians, and cost avoidance. Results: The professional knowledge scores increased from 53 ± 16 to 81 ± 5 after training (P = 0.005). A total of 579 prescription interventions were documented for 10 PGY2 pharmacists. The number of PGY2 pharmacist prescription interventions before and after training was 13 ± 7 and 45 ± 26 (P = 0.007), respectively. After training, the number of therapeutic drug monitoring sessions increased from 0 to 22, and that of patient-specific medication treatments increased from 17 to 160 (P ＜ 0.0001). However, the acceptance rate of PGY2 interventions decreased from 87% to 79% (P = 0.047). The estimated cost avoidance of all interventions increased from NT$ 59,300 to 185,550. The average probability of harm of each PGY2 pharmacist intervention before and after training was 0.5. Conclusions: A series of education and training courses benefits PGY2 pharmacists for individualized patient treatment and treatment monitoring. Thus, PGY2 training could help medical teams reduce healthcare costs associated with clinical interventions.

First Page

208

Last Page

218

DOI

10.6145/jme.202112_25(4).0005

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