Pharmacists in the Emergency Department
The Pharmacist in the Emergency department (PharmED) is a large collaboration project between three emergency departments (EDs) in Northern Norway. In addition to pharmacists working in the EDs, it employs two PhD students and a Postdoctoral fellow.
Background The “Emergency Department (ED) Pharmacist” is an integrated part of the ED interdisciplinary team in many countries, which have proved to improve medication safety and reduce costs related to hospitalisations. In Norway, few EDs are equipped with an ED pharmacist, and research has not been performed in Norway describing the benefit of this.
Aim The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of implementing the ED pharmacist in the interdisciplinary ED team.
Setting This is a multisenter study where the intervention will be implemented in three EDs in Northern Norway; Tromsø, Bodø and Harstad.
Endpoints The primary endpoint is “Time in hospital during 30 days after admission to the ED”, which is a composite endpoint combining i) time in ED during index stay, ii) time in hospital during index stay if hospitalized and iii) time in ED or hospital if rehospitalized during 30 days after index admission. Secondary endpoints include time in EDs, time in first hospitalisation, time to rehospitalisation, 3 month rehospitalisation rates, mortality rates, intervention fidelity, intervention description, acceptance rate of pharmacist recommendations, clinical relevance and appropriateness of pharmacist recommendations, medication changes during admission and health economy of the intervention.
Members:
Financial/grant information:
The project is financed by Helse Nord