Abstract

PRESENT STATUS OF HOSPITAL PHARMACY IN GOVERNMENT HOSPITALS OF NEPAL

Nirajan Regmi, Laxman Wagle* and Dharma Prasad Khanal

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Hospital pharmacy practice in Nepal is on early stage of development. Hospital formulary was implemented after commencement of hospital pharmacy directive but exact status is not known. Method: This study was cross sectional and observational research design with census data. After the ethic research committee approval data were collected within the time frame from Mangsir 2076 to Jestha 2077. The Methods of data collection is based on email, phone interview or direct survey based questionnaire with pharmacist in charge of respective hospital whichever is feasible. These questionnaires were pretested. Data analysis was performed by using SPSS IBM version 16. Data were quantified using suitable descriptive and inferential statistics whereas presentation is done with the help of diagrams and tables as necessary. Results: Out of 58 Government hospitals having their own hospital pharmacy only 50 hospitals were participated in this research. We observed, more than half of the hospitals were having drug and therapeutic committee (68%), less than 50% of the hospital pharmacy were concerned on prescription review (48%), only 22 hospital pharmacy department were use computers and internet for drug interaction checking, we found very few hospitals having their own hospital formulary (12%) and very least hospital pharmacy were involved in extemporaneous preparation (8%). More than half of the hospital pharmacy departments were unable to provide 24 hours per day service. The average number of pharmacist per 100 beds was found 1.12 which accepted the average value of 0.9. Conclusion: Though our result shows sparse distribution of development of various component of hospital pharmacy practice across various governmental hospitals, it is very welcoming. Furthermore, this study is able to provide general description of hospital pharmacy development process within a data collection period.

Keywords: CPE; DTC; Hospital formulary; Hospital pharmacy; Manpower distribution.