14 DAY TRIAL // The usual place to find a pharmacist is behind the counter, in a local pharmacy for example, but an associate professor in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, believes that pharmacists would be more helpful in doctors' offices.
Scot Simpson has published a new study which concluded that associating pharmacists to the primary-care team in family medicine clinics, can be very helpful to patients suffering from chronic diseases like diabetes, by allowing them to better manage their risk factors.
His study was conducted in five Edmonton clinics, and the bottom line was that type 2 diabetes patients had a significant drop of their blood pressure, once pharmacists were included in the on-site clinical examination and consulting process.
The research included 153 patients, whose hypertension was poorly controlled at the beginning of the study.
Among these, 82 patients had advice from a pharmacist part of the medical team, and they were more likely to reach blood-pressure treatment targets recommended by the Canadian Diabetes Association.
Another encouraging fact is that thanks to the contribution of the pharmacists, the predicted 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease for people suffering from type 2 diabetes will drop by three per cent.
It seems only logical then, to add pharmacists to primary-care teams in order to help improve health and even reduce the costs of the medical system.
Simpson said that “pharmacists can play a more active role in primary care and community clinics.
“We’ve already been actively collaborating on health-care teams for years in hospitals, so it makes sense to also join the primary care teams in medical clinics.”
Placing pharmacists in the doctor’s office will allow the “doctors, nurses and pharmacists [to] directly discuss issues specific to any one patient, and by doing so, have the best outcome for the patient,” Simpson added.
“The team effort really allows for more customized care of the patient.”
The results of this study were reported online recently by the journal Diabetes Care.