Objective: The current study aimed to investigate pharmacists’ intervention statistics in a secondary care setting in Pakistan. Methodology: A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted at a secondary care facility of Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan, analyzing in-patient and out-patient pharmacy records from June 2022 to June 2023. Results: The study analyzed records of 10.9% (n=1340) male and female patients with a median age of six years (IQR: 23 years). Pharmacists intervened in 99.1% (n=1329) of prescriptions due to prescribing errors (PEs). The most common intervention was therapy optimization (e.g., therapeutic drug monitoring, incomplete prescriptions, wrong doses/frequencies, updating drug allergies, following culture/sensitivity results and monitoring electrolytes), accounting for 72.4% (n=970) of interventions, followed by route conversion at 19.6% (n=263). The overall acceptance rate of pharmacists’ interventions among physicians was 88.7% (n=1189). Conclusion: PEs were common and pharmacists’ interventions were vital in preventing patient harm. PEs were more frequent among in-patients at risk of polypharmacy. Pharmacists optimized therapy across all age groups by adjusting doses, administration routes and applying restrictions. The study noted high acceptance of these interventions.
Butt et al. (2025) studied this question.