Evaluation of Patients Pharmaceutical Care Needs Unmet and Associated Factors in Pediatric Ward of Mettu Karl Referral Hospital, South Western Oromia, Ethiopia: A Prospective Observational Study, 2021 - Abstract
Abstract
Background: Pharmaceutical care is a practice in which the practitioner takes responsibility for a patient’s drug-related needs, and is held accountable for this commitment.
Responsible drug therapy is provided for the purpose of achieving positive patient outcomes. In pediatrics there is not much information, but it has been estimated that from 20 to
50% of children suffer some drug related problem during the hospital stay, although the majority of drug related problem are preventable.
Objective: To ascertain evaluation of patients pharmaceutical care needs unmet and associated factors in pediatric ward of Mettu Karl Referral Hospital.
Methods: A prospective observational study design was carried out from February 12//2020 to February 24/2021. Data was collected cleared, coded and analyzed
by statistical packages for social sciences 23.0 version statistical software. Based on the univariate analysis, the variables that were significant (P ? 0.25) were included in the
multivariate analysis to control for confounders and to identify factors independently associated with the occurrence of drug related problems. P - Value <0.05 was considered as
statistically significant.
Results: Of the study 189 study participants, 115 (60.8%), were males, and the participants mean age was 1.4339 ±0.864 years. A total of 189 pediatric patients were
included in the study, of these 121(64.01%), patients had at least one drug therapy problem. The most frequently identified drug related problems were unnecessary drug therapy
42(34.7%), and need additional drug therapy 26(21.5%). Most 95 (50%), of patients were diagnosed for one case and the mean number of diagnosis per patient were 2.28.
Ceftriaxone were the most frequently prescribed class of drugs accounted 272 (30%) from the total of 903 drugs prescribed. Out of 375 diagnosis encountered during the study
severe pneumonia and bronchial asthma were the leading case accounted 118 (31.5%), and62 (16.5%), of the total cases diagnosed respectively. Polypharmacy ? 5 medications
(AOR=3.834, 95% CI= 0.443-7.57, p=0.034), length of hospital stay ? 5 days (AOR=1.48, 95%CI= (0.471-1.644),p=0.018), and co-morbidity (AOR =2.507, 95% CI: 1.270-
4.949,P =0.008) were the independent predictors of drug therapy problem occurrence.
Conclusion and recommendations: Unnecessary drug therapy problem was mostly occurred in this study due to in appropriate indication of the medications and antibiotics is
the class of drugs mostly encountered in drug therapy problem due to it was prescribed empirically. Comorbidity had been identified as major risk factors for occurrence of drug
related problems. The health sector policy makers should continue to include clinical pharmacists in the hospital to involve and strengthen ward based clinical pharmacy services.