Inpatient Counselling
Role of Pharmacist in Inpatient Counselling
Counselling refers to professional activity where the pharmacists educate patients on their pharmacotherapy in order to enhance patient’s compliance on medications. During the counselling session, the pharmacist will give professional advice, opinion and instruction on how to use medications. There are two types of counselling, bedside counselling and discharge counselling. Bedside counselling is given to patient who is in the ward while discharge counselling is given to patient upon discharge.
Bedside counselling can speed up patient’s discharge and promote better medicine knowledge and compliance. Through the counselling process, pharmacist will provide patient with information such as name of the drugs prescribed, indication of medication, dosage regimen, route of administration, common side effects and special directions or precautions for the preparation, and how to handle missed dose issue.
Discharge counselling can reduce the number of patients at the outpatient department and enhance patient’s satisfaction by allowing them to have better understanding about their pharmacotherapy. Pharmacist can counsel the patient or family members on the medication prescribed to ensure patient compliance.
In certain big general hospitals, bedside and discharge counselling is commonly done by ward pharmacists.
Benefits of inpatient counselling are:
- Can reduce the number of outpatients in the outpatient department through adherence of patients toward their medications.
- Can reduce hospitalization and speed up the discharge process
- Reduce morbidity and mortality of the patients
- Reducing drug related problems and increase medication adherence