Pharmacist Role in Palliative Care

Abstract

Introduction: In the whole world the palliative care team in community health care and hospitals has been established. But pharmacists are not regular members of those teams. As a vital member of this team pharmacists can involve in the medication management of the patient and thereby decreasing the errors in the medicaments.

Materials and Methods: Data were collected from relevant publications describing the roles, functions, activities and interventions in palliative care settings made by the pharmacist.

Result: Data were collected from 27 articles of various countries include USA, UK, Poland, Mexico, Australia etc. The major functions of a pharmacist in palliative care include medication history interview, medication order review, patient counselling, educational programs, pain management, assessing symptoms of the patient, administrational services and identification and prevention of medicament related issues.

Conclusion: From the literature, it can be found that palliative care settings are different in between countries and pharmacist has an important role in these settings in various countries. As a legal person regarding drugs pharmacist can play a major role in various drug related activities and improve the quality of the services provided by the palliative care team.