Critical care pharmacy hospital services

A focal point for critical care pharmacists and hospitals with critical care units is a position paper on critical care pharmacy services jointly developed and published by ACCP and SCCM. - This paper identifies and describes the fundamental, desirable, and optimal activities that define the scope of practice of the critical care pharmacist (Table 2 ). Fundamental activities are deemed vital to the safe provision of pharmaceutical care to the critically ill patient. The fundamental responsibilities of critical care pharmacists include a full-time commitment to critical care patients, evaluation of all drug therapy, identification of adverse events, individualized drug dosing, provision of drug information, documentation of activities, and... 

The object was to identify and describe the scope of practice that characterizes the critical care pharmacist and critical care pharmacy services. Specillcally the goals were to define the level of clinical practice and specialized skills characterizing the critical care pharmacist as clinician, educator, researcher, and manager and to recommend fundamental, desirable, and optimal pharmacy services and personnel requirements for the provision of pharmaceutical care to critically ill patients. Hospitals having comprehensive resources as well as those with more limited resources were considered. 

Existing guidelines and literature for pharmacy practice and drag use processes were reviewed and adapted for the critical care setting.The needs of hospitals with comprehensive resources as well as those with more limited resources were considered. The task force created three gradations of pharmacist responsibilities and departmental services as fundamental, desirable, and optimal. Classification of the elements into each category was the result of the consensus process. For the purposes of this article, the following definitions were used. Fundamental activities are vital to the safe provision of pharmaceutical... 

The term pharmacy and hospital services refers to departmental and institutional/organizational components of the infrastructure that support the pharmacist s activities. They consist of systems, operations, and personnel who facilitate and support the provision of patient care, teaching, and research to optimize safe and effective pharmaceutical care of the critically ill. 

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