Pharmacists working at hospitals in Taiwan tend to have too heavy a workload, which leaves them little time to advise patients, a survey released yesterday by the Taiwan Healthcare Reform Foundation showed.
“This can be dangerous for patients because overloaded pharmacists could commit more mistakes,” foundation secretary-general Yu Wen-shih (余雯世) said.
The survey, conducted from Jan. 19 through Jan. 21 at 20 medical centers, found that on average, pharmacists served 450 patients per day during the three-day period leading to the Lunar New Year holiday.
More than one quarter of pharmacists were so busy that they could not provide verbal information to patients, the survey showed.
Among those who managed to do so, 80 percent only spoke if the patients asked questions, with conversations averaging just 35 seconds, the results showed.
Also, 6.3 percent of pharmacists did not ascertain the identity of patients before giving them medicine, while only 25 percent of pharmacists offered information verbally about possible side effects, the survey showed.
“This increases the chances of giving the wrong medicine to the wrong person and increases the likelihood of mistakes,” Yu said.
Kao Ya-hui (高雅慧), an associate professor at National Cheng Kung University’s Institute of Clinical Pharmacy, said it took at least seven minutes and 32 seconds for a pharmacist to fill a single prescription form and that it would take another two minutes and nine seconds to give verbal instructions on the proper use of drugs.
Therefore, the maximum number of prescriptions handled by each pharmacist should be 64 per day, Kao said.
However, a Department of Health estimate in 2004 showed that on average, pharmacists in Taiwan completed one prescription in 2.9 minutes, with each pharmacist handling as many as 165 prescriptions per day. The number was significantly higher than the maximum limit of 30 prescriptions per day in the US and 40 in Japan, the foundation said.
The Bureau of National Health Insurance sets the limit at 100 prescriptions per day.
The foundation said hospitals in Taiwan had not paid enough attention to the quality of service provided by their pharmacists because this aspect was not part of the evaluation criteria at hospitals.
Before solutions are found to educate and train more pharmacists, Yu said the foundation would suggest that the government implement a strict mechanism for prescriptions.
“For instance, a pharmacy’s performance should also be evaluated on an annual basis as a reference for people when they need to see a doctor,” Yu said.
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