A surgical preadmission pharmacist service in a tertiary paediatric hospital: a pilot study

Abstract Background Pharmacist surgical preadmission review is common in adult healthcare settings, however there is little evidence of this practice in the paediatric setting. This research describes a pilot surgical preadmission pharmacist service in a paediatric hospital. Aim To evaluate the impact of a surgical preadmission pharmacist service on patient flow and the quality of medication management. Method A retrospective review (2 months) was conducted to compare an intervention group (1 May 2019–30 June 2019) to historical baseline (1 October 2018–30 November 2018). Children and adolescents (aged 0–18 years) presenting for elective surgery and overnight admission were included. Relevant clinical data and timestamps were extracted from the electronic medical record. Multiple linear regression models were built to examine the difference in outcomes between the control and intervention groups. This project was exempt due to the local policy requirements that constitute research by the Queensland Children's Hospital Human Research Ethics Committee (Reference no: LNR/19/QCHQ/53406). The justification for this exemption was as follows: the study presented no foreseeable risk of patient harm as it involved evaluation of an established standard of clinical care and involved the use of existing collections of records that contain only non‐identifiable patient data. Results In total, 135 patients were included in the baseline and 96 patients were included in the intervention group. The intervention group had statistically significant lower time to best possible medication history (BPMH) by 47.57 h (95% confidence interval CI −53.25 to −41.89, p < 0.001). Time to prescription of home medications was significantly reduced in the intervention group by 5.26 h (95% CI −10.45 to −0.08, p = 0.05). There was no difference in proportion of patients with home medications omitted (71–62%, p = 0.38) or requiring modification (14–12%, p = 0.58) between the two groups. Conclusion Implementation of a surgical preadmission pharmacist service in our paediatric hospital demonstrated earlier BPMH documentation and prescription of home medications, without negative effects on perioperative patient flow.