Examples of pharmacy services designed to meet the needs of groups of patients include formulary management, drug information, drug use evaluation, pharmacoeconomic assessment, total parenteral nutrition and the pharmacovigilance of adverse drug reactions. The efficient delivery of pharmaceutical care requires that the specific needs of particular groups of patients be addressed by a clinical pharmacy service, appropriately designed to meet those needs. Implicit in these developments is the requirement that a service can be assessed, reviewed and improved through systematic audit. The Department's Pharmacy Practice Research activity is responding to the needs of pharmacy practitioners for systematic approaches to the delivery and quality assurance of services. The Department has become involved in application of pharmaceutical care models in which systematic ways of assessing patients' needs in the community and in hospital are based on medical and drug history, social environment and measures of comprehension and compliance.
Research involves developing methods for documentation and assessment of patients.
Examples of areas of current interest include screening of hospital inpatients, structured scored interviews by pharmacists to assess risk of non-adherence in the domiciliary environment and assessment of pharmaceutical needs based on indices of social deprivation. It is increasingly recognised that the pharmacist is in a key position to make an effective contribution at all levels of health care. Through collaborative links with practitioners a number of specific patient services are being developed and evaluated. The Department is also active in pharmacy audit and therapeutic audit. The audit of drug use against established guidelines is a field of increasing interest in the pursuit of the efficient and effective use of medicines both in the community and in hospital.