Introduction
It is hard to deny that collaboration is the best healthcare practice. Although professionals are aware of their roles and responsibilities and have the required skills and knowledge to care for their patients, their qualifications may not be sufficient to enhance a client’s treatment or identify opportunities to reduce medication burden.
Therefore, strong working relationships and effective communication are imperative for maintaining and improving clinical quality, safety, and outcomes. In interdisciplinary teams, collaborations between practitioners and pharmacists can be highly successful and efficient when they leverage their overlapping responsibilities to have a profound, beneficial impact. In this paper, I will discuss a recent situation in which good interprofessional communication and the application of evidence-based practice improved patient outcomes.
Personal Experience
The situation I will describe demonstrates how several pharmacy roles allow us to enhance practice and performance in our facility. We have a patient with schizoaffective disorder, and the main approach selected for his treatment was polypharmacy, which is the practice of prescribing multiple agents with different effects. Thus, he was given some mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, prophylactics, such as metformin for weight and Cogentin for extrapyramidal effects, and Ativan for acute mania. Unfortunately, even with these medications, the patient did not show significant improvement over a long period. Consequently, it was decided to collaborate with a pharmacist to review the multiple-agent treatment and determine whether it was effective or needed to be changed.
The pharmacist assessed the patient’s current drug therapy and completed an extensive chart review. After that, the professional decided that polypharmacy was not an appropriate course of action for this client and that prescribing a single agent to which the patient had responded well in the past would be more efficient. As a result, collaborating with this expert enabled us to provide more appropriate treatment recommendations and improve the person’s condition by reducing medication burden. Without consulting the pharmacist, our team would not be able to develop a better solution or recognize that polypharmacy was not a beneficial option.
Evidence from Research
This case also demonstrates the value of evidence-based practice. According to Sudeshika et al. (2023), it is quite natural for some healthcare teams to be willing to include pharmacists in their collaborations, as pharmacists play important roles. For instance, they review medication regimens for appropriateness and effectiveness and participate in client rounds to provide consultative services that foster evidence-based medication selection. These roles of such professionals are demonstrated in the described situation.
Waszyk-Nowaczyk et al. (2022) indicate that nurses welcome and value the contributions of pharmacists, and Waszyk-Nowaczyk et al. (2021) state that integration between physicians and pharmacists helps them complement each other in decision-making. When they cooperate and base their decisions on current evidence and knowledge, it is more likely that patient outcomes are enhanced.
Conclusion
To conclude, interprofessional collaboration and evidence-based practice play imperative roles in improving healthcare and patient outcomes. When professionals unite their knowledge, skills, and judgment and communicate effectively, they can identify gaps in their practice, find ways to enhance treatment, and improve the quality of care provided. In the situation I described, referring to pharmacists’ expertise can reduce patients’ medication burden and improve drug therapy response.
References
Sudeshika, T., Deeks, L. S., Naunton, M., Peterson, G. M., & Kosari, S. (2023). Interprofessional collaboration within general practice teams following the inclusion of non-dispensing pharmacists. Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice, 16(1), 49.
Waszyk-Nowaczyk, M., Guzenda, W., Dragun, P., Olsztyńska, L., Liwarska, J., Michalak, M., Ferlak, J., Drozd, M., & Sobiechowska, R. (2022). Interdisciplinary cooperation between pharmacists and nurses—experiences and expectations. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(18).
Waszyk-Nowaczyk, M., Guzenda, W., Kamasa, K., Pawlak, K., Bałtruszewicz, N., Artyszuk, K., Białoszewski, A., & Merks, P. (2021). Cooperation between pharmacists and physicians–whether it was before and is it still ongoing during the pandemic? Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare, 14, 2101-2110.