Evaluating the impact of clinical interventions by PharmD students on internal medicine clerkships: the results of a 3 year study.

BACKGROUND: As the practice of pharmacy evolves, requiring more clinically oriented healthcare providers, PharmD programs expand their training to more hospital sites to expose students to management of a variety of disease states. These hospital sites often require proof of the impact of PharmD students on patient care over an extended period. This is the first long-term (3 year) study reported.
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of clinical interventions by PharmD students on internal medicine clerkships over a 3 year period at a 627 bed county hospital with 165 general medical/surgical beds and 10 internal medicine teams.
METHODS: Between January 1, 2003, and December 31, 2005, all pharmacy interventions at Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, NY, were recorded and analyzed for percentage of contribution, acceptance rate, type, frequency, and impact level.
RESULTS: PharmD students contributed to 28.8% of all pharmacy interventions made, with an acceptance rate for interventions of 92%. The most frequent types of interventions performed by PharmD students involved providing drug information (46.8%), recommending alternative agents (10.8%), and providing drug indications (10.6%). Overall, 49.5% of PharmD student interventions were categorized as having moderate to high level impact.
CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that the impact of PharmD students on clinical interventions is significant and improves overall patient care over a long-term period.