Impact of the liver transplant pharmacy (LTP) at the center for liver transplant and hepatobiliary surgery (CLTHPS) in educating our transplanted patients in Costa Rica. A comparison of benefits to a traditional model pharmacy
Victoria Montoya Picado1, Edward Castro Santa2, Maria Amalia Matamoros Ramirez2.
1Pharmacy, Center for Liver Transplant and Hepatobiliary Surgery, Caja Costarricense del Seguro Social, San Jose, Costa Rica; 2Surgery, Center for Liver Transplant and Hepatobiliary Surgery, Caja Costarricense del Seguro Social, San Jose, Costa Rica
Introduction: The social security in Costa Rica has institutional pharmacies with traditional models supporting transplant programs (not fully dedicated to this matter). The LTP at the CLTHPS represents a unique and innovative model of care for transplant patients. The LTP has specialized workers who dedicate all their time to attend the liver transplanted population, those who are in the waiting list and also, the patients who have had any hepatobiliary surgery, encompassing a comprehensive attention from the admission until hospital discharge, as well as outpatients. Part of our success has been an active education program and a personalized pharmacy for the particular needs of each patient. The LTP guarantees an open and permanent communication between the patient and the pharmacist, who has a permanent position in the LTP, allowing her to know globally every patient, their medications, lifestyles, nutritional issues, etc. In this way, the pharmacist identifies the needs of each patient, and works hand in hand with each patient in a multi-step approach of education, including: medicament education and dispensations, resolution of doubts about dosage, interactions and side effects and informative material, etc.
Methods: We want to compare the impact of our educational program at the LTP with the counterpart made in a traditional model pharmacy (TMP) for a whole year. We have our monthly indicators in which we register all the production we made, including the educational part, as well as the amount of medication refunded by non-withdrawal. All institutional pharmacies measure the monthly production and that data is accessible, for further comparative analyze of information between our LTP and a TMP. The closer TMP to the LTP is the Hospital Mexico´s Pharmacy, so we’ll work with its yearly production.
Results: What we expect to find is that the LTP has a stronger impact in educative benefit for our patients, according to the quantity of attended patients, based in the quantity of non-withdrawal prescriptions and reduction of misinformation using the prescribed medication.
Conclusions: Our LTP, with a define attention program, not only helps our patients with a personalized education to have a better comprehension of their medication, but also makes the non-withdrawal prescriptions to maintain in low rates.
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