By - Pallvit Jain, Student of PGDM-Healthcare Management at Goa Institute of Management
Consider the following statement:
Doctor
to Patient, “Take Omeprazole 20mg on empty stomach every day for 5days”
Would
you consider this statement enough for giving direction of dosage to patient?
Now
consider another statement:
“Take
the tablet omeprazole 20mg empty stomach, every day for next 5days. Have meal
only after 20min of dosage”.
The
two statements above though intended to same patient with same dosage
instructions convey different meaning. The first statement lacks information
about time consumption of medicine, while the other statement specifies clearly
the medicine consumption time.
The
question here is; will the two statements make difference in treatment of
patient considering the same medicine is being consumed?
The
answer for this is Yes. Food consumed immediately after omeprazole medicine
will affect efficacy of drug; Omeprazole medicine gets degraded in the stomach
due to acidic pH. Missing out of proper instruction can affect the efficacy
intended and thus decrease overall medication value to patient. This shows how
information given in a complete, easily understandable manner, more important.
Doctor
prescribes drug to patient but sometimes fail to provide proper instructions. The
reason associated with this (above mentioned statement) can be; lack of
knowledge, ignorance, lack of time etc. This can ultimately affect duration in
which patient gets cured and thus affects quality of patient care. Sometimes
patient skip their dosage, in such scenario what should the patient do? Also
sometimes adverse reaction is observed during medication. Doctors cannot always
assess such situation. So to provide help with any queries or issue, keeping an
additional employee can be a good option or training an existing employee, the
best choice in this case is a pharmacist. Preferably, a qualified pharmacist
who has sufficient knowledge of medicines, good communication skills should be
preferred. A pharmacist will be the right communicator for providing medicine
dosage instructions as he is aware of dosage, time, duration of gap between
medicine etc.
Following
are the areas where a pharmacist can add value to outpatient services:
Patient Counselling: Patient counselling by pharmacist will
have two advantages; firstly, a pharmacist can assess the medication and
treatment history more productively by having a highly interactive session.
Secondly it will reduce the time between doctor and patient in assessing the
history and treatment background of patient, which will directly reduce patient
waiting time.
Providing knowledge and
instructions of drug:
After procuring drugs the patient needs to be directed regarding drug intake,
amount of dose, time of dose, manner of drug intake and foods to avoid during
medication etc. Certain drugs react with dairy products or grape fruit juice or
other dietary items. In such scenarios the pharmacist can help them to prepare
diet plan during medication. The pharmacist can also provide knowledge
regarding routine to be followed during medication. Also pharmacist can provide his/her contact
details to those patient who require special attention. This can be seen as an
additional service provided to the outpatients.
Assessing problems
during medication:
Sometimes patient skip dosage, and then consume later when and don’t consider
it important to discuss with doctor on such petty issues. But considering case
of antibiotics, a skipped dosage results in starting medication all over again.
In such scenario’s pharmacist can act as a facilitator to help patients.
Pharmacist should also assess the queries regarding adverse drug reaction and
should provide other medication if required.
Apart
from this pharmacist, can access need of individual patient and decide whom to
provide special attention to and instruct further medication procedure and can
refer patient back to doctor if current medication is not working.
These
small actions will establish a direct relation between Patient and hospital.
These small things when dealt with more patient centric way will directly show empathetic behaviour of
hospital towards them. The patients will feel good for such a caring
attitude. These all features will directly enhance the quality of outpatient
service of a hospital. Undoubtedly, this attitude of pharmacist will help in
creating awareness for Health education. Thus pharmacist can help in bridging
the gap between patient centric care and quality care.
