Background China recently initiated ambitious healthcare reforms aiming to provide affordable and equitable basic health care to all by 2020. To meet these goals, new policies issued by China’s Ministry of Health surrounding hospital accreditation and antimicrobial use highlighted the role of clinical pharmacy services. International studies highlight the benefits of such services; however to date they have excluded literature reported in Chinese.

Purpose To summarise all available evidence showing the effectiveness of clinical pharmacy services in improving the quality use of medicines in China’s hospitals.

Materials and Methods For the English databases, Web of Science, Medline, IPA and Embase were searched using the following keywords: (‘pharmacists’ OR ‘pharmacy’ OR ‘pharmaceutical services/care’) AND (‘China’). For the Chinese database, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database on disc was searched using the following keywords: (‘clinical pharmacist/pharmacy’ OR ‘pharmaceutical services/care’). A native bilingual Chinese pharmacist processed relevant Chinese articles.

Results 75 published papers were included. The majority of studies were conducted in the inpatient setting (68%), which included clinical pharmacy interventions such as educating doctors and patients, evaluating and monitoring the implementation of hospital policies and reviewing medications on the ward. In the outpatient setting, the majority of studies conducted involved educating patients.

Clinical pharmacy services frequently focused on antimicrobials (44%). More than half of these studies employed an administrative intervention alongside the clinical pharmacy service. Clinical pharmacy research in China was also found to occur primarily in provincial capital cities (63%) and to use a comparative study design (61%).

Conclusions Clinical pharmacy services in China, with its unique healthcare system and cultural nuances, appear to positively influence patient care and the appropriate use of medicines. From the published literature, it is expected that clinical pharmacy services could make a strong contribution to China’s healthcare reform given further governmental and educational support.

No conflict of interest.