(P-159) Impacts of Pharmacists’ Intervention on Drug-related Problems in Treatment for Pediatric Outpatients in Vietnam

Background: Children are at high risk of drug-related problems (DRPs), leading to increase the risk of treatment failures and treatment costs. Pharmacists’ intervention has been shown to be effective in reducing DRPs. In Vietnam, studies about intervention on DRPs in pediatric patients are limited.

Objectives: To determine the prevalence of DRPs in outpatients’ prescriptions; to investigate the potentially clinical relevance of DRPs on efficacy, safety, cost of treatment and to evaluate the impact of pharmacists’ intervention on such DRPs.

Methods: Prospective study, with pre- and post-intervention measurement assessment was conducted to collect pediatric outpatients’ prescriptions (from the hospital's electronic prescribing software) between January 2 and January 15, 2020 (pre-intervention period and between July 25 and August 22, 2020 (post-intervention period. DRPs were identified and categorized using the Pharmaceutical Care Network European (PCNE) classification system version 9.1. Potentially clinical relevance of DRPs on efficacy, safety, cost of treatment was evaluated through expert’s consensus. The intervention program was developed based on the results of the pre-intervention observations, including DRPs reports, reviewing medical records, provision of a list of medications should be considered when prescribing and physicians consutation. After intervention, prescriptions were evaluate.

Results: In the pre-intervention period, there were 2788/4218 (66.1%) prescriptions with at least one DRP. In which, the most common DRPs were inappropriate timing of administration and incorrect dosage (36.1% and 35.6%, respectively). There were 50.5% of pre-intervention prescriptions were considered as unsafe, 29.2% costly and 23.9% less effective. In the post-intervention, the number of prescriptions with at least 1 DRPs decreased to 44.5% (p < 0.001). Most of the DRPs decreased significantly (p < 0.05). In addition, the effectiveness, safety and cost-saving of post-intervention prescriptions increased (p < 0.001).

Conclusions: Drug-related problems in pediatric prescriptions were quit common. Pharmacists’ intervention helped improve the prevalence and types of DRPs. Moreover, the intervention showed improvement in prescriptions’ efficacy, safety and cost savings.