'Clinical'

[Don Quichotte]

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So being on this forum and hearing the term clinical pharmacist thrown around all the time...I am beginning (ok, i never didn't think this) to think that it is a pretty amorphous concept and that when people use the term they may be imagining very different things.
So, to simplify the question a little, let's restrict this to acute care hospital settings. So what does a clinical pharmacist do?
At the hospital where I work clinical pharmacists take care of a lot things under collaborative agreement---abx dosing/adjusting, renal adjustments, phenytoin monitoring (when asked), anticoagulation (heparin, direct thrombin inhibitors, VKA, etc), parenteral nutrition, iv iron, plus other odds and ends I am probably not thinking of right now. Pharmacists also are part of stroke team (dose the tPA) and code team (mostly getting drugs ready, but also sometimes administering them directly). Additionally pharmacists monitor electrolytes and other labs (often being consulted in cases of symptomatic hyponatremia). Of course we take care of any other random med issues (interactions, inappropriate dose, etc) and, cough, serve as a resource for drug info for everyone in the hospital. Pharmacists also routinely precept students. Things we don't do that I think other pharmacist may do include med rec (other than entering/verifying the orders---mostly taken care of by order entry pharmacist), no discharge counseling (except exceptional cases or anticoagulants). This is by no means an exhaustive list of things that are done by the pharmacists at this hospital, but I think it gives the basic gist of it.
So, what do other clinical pharmacists do? Are academic hospitals very different?

 

[Trent Steele]

So being on this forum and hearing the term clinical pharmacist thrown around all the time...I am beginning (ok, i never didn't think this) to think that it is a pretty amorphous concept and that when people use the term they may be imagining very different things.
So, to simplify the question a little, let's restrict this to acute care hospital settings. So what does a clinical pharmacist do?
At the hospital where I work clinical pharmacists take care of a lot things under collaborative agreement---abx dosing/adjusting, renal adjustments, phenytoin monitoring (when asked), anticoagulation (heparin, direct thrombin inhibitors, VKA, etc), parenteral nutrition, iv iron, plus other odds and ends I am probably not thinking of right now. Pharmacists also are part of stroke team (dose the tPA) and code team (mostly getting drugs ready, but also sometimes administering them directly). Additionally pharmacists monitor electrolytes and other labs (often being consulted in cases of symptomatic hyponatremia). Of course we take care of any other random med issues (interactions, inappropriate dose, etc) and, cough, serve as a resource for drug info for everyone in the hospital. Pharmacists also routinely precept students. Things we don't do that I think other pharmacist may do include med rec (other than entering/verifying the orders---mostly taken care of by order entry pharmacist), no discharge counseling (except exceptional cases or anticoagulants). This is by no means an exhaustive list of things that are done by the pharmacists at this hospital, but I think it gives the basic gist of it.
So, what do other clinical pharmacists do? Are academic hospitals very different?

I was under the impression that it was against the law for a pharmacist to administer meds? So they really administer drugs at codes at ur fac eh? That's pretty sweet, though I'd personally rather have a nurse or doc do it.

 

[Don Quichotte]

Depends on your state's practice act. But this is exactly why I was asking the question about what is 'clinical' in other practice sites and in different states.