Physician Perceptions of Consultant Pharmacist Services Associated with an Intervention for Adverse Drug Events in the Nursing Facility.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the importance and performance of consultant pharmacist services delivered before and after an intervention to detect and manage adverse drug events among nursing facility residents.

DESIGN: Before and after intervention survey of physicians participating in a randomized, controlled trial.

SETTING: Four nonprofit, academically affiliated nursing facilities.

PARTICIPANTS: Attending physicians providing nursing facility care who were randomized to intervention or control groups.

INTERVENTIONS: Within the intervention arm, consultant pharmacists provided academic detailing in which trained health care professionals visit practicing physicians in their offices and present the most up-to-date clinical information. Physicians responded to alerts from a medication monitoring system, adjudicated system alerts for adverse drug events (ADEs), and provided structured recommendations about ADE management.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: We compared physicians' assessments of the importance and performance of consultant pharmacist services before and after the trial intervention in the intervention and control groups.

RESULTS: In the intervention group, ratings of importance increased for all 24 survey questions, and 5 of the changes were statistically significant (P < 0.05). In the control group, ratings of importance increased for 16 questions, and none of the changes were statistically significant. In the intervention group, ratings of performance increased for all 24 questions, and 20 of the changes were statistically significant. In the control group, ratings of performance increased for 16 questions, and none of the changes was statistically significant.

CONCLUSION: A multifaceted, consultant pharmacist-led intervention comprising academic detailing, computerized decision support, and structured communication framework can improve physicians' assessment of importance and performance of consultant pharmacist services.

ABBREVIATIONS: ADE = Adverse drug event, M = Statistically significant mean, RCT = Randomized controlled trial, SBAR = Situation, Background, Discussion, Recommendation, SD = Standard deviation.