Results
26 of 100 patients in the EES-support and 28 of 100 in the control group had at least one documented actual DRP. Some demographic characteristics for these patients are presented in table 1.
Table 1 insert here
Table 2 gives comparisons between groups regarding the number of identified actual DRPs. For the comparison of the number of patients where the pharmacist found at least 1 DRP, for which the power calculation was based, there was a non-significant trend that the intervention failed, and the pharmacist found less DRPs using EES-support. For the other comparisons the pharmacist identified more DRPs using the EES-support. For the total (at least 1, 2 and 3-5 DRPs) the comparisons were statistically significant.
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Most DRPs were identified among elderly patients (>70 years), 85 and 79% in the EES-support- and control group, respectively. Table 3 shows comparisons of pharmacists’ initiatives towards patients and prescribers between the groups regarding the total number of identified DRPs, documented suggestions, presented suggestions to the patient and/or prescriber, and resolved DRPs. For the EES-support group, a total of 47/52 of identified actual DRP action proposals have been documented (90%), 46/52 (88%) of these DRPs have been presented and 43/52 (82%) have been resolved. For the control group, the corresponding values are 35/39 (90%), 31/39 (79%), and 29/39 (74%). There was a significant difference favoring EES-support that it helped pharmacists to present suggestions to physicians and consequently to resolve DRPs. For patient initiatives there was a trend but no significant differences. Most suggestions and resolved problems were however directed towards patients.
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In the EES-support group drug-drug interactions were the most common DRP type (33%) (Table 4). In the control group it was drug duplications (38%).
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Table 5 describes initiatives performed (presented suggestions) toward the patient or the prescriber. In the EES-support group, initiatives were directed almost equally between the prescriber and the patient. In the control group most initiatives were directed toward the patients.
Table 5 insert here