Background Reviewing the patient charts, our department realised the inappropriateness of some oral drugs that were being administered via nasogastric tube. We discovered the need to conduct a study that would examine the positive impact of pharmacy analysis of intensive care unit cases where nasogastric drug administration is necessary and liaison with physicians to improve outcomes.

Purpose To report acceptability of the drugs administered to the patients via nasogastric tube in an intensive care unit and ensure patients experienced the precise effect that physicians wanted to get from the treatment.

Materials and methods Patient charts were evaluated daily, using the computer system. In the first period of the study, pharmacists prepared recommendations regarding improved practice for nasogastric administration of drugs. Between the two study periods, a meeting was arranged with doctors and a consensus was reached for a preferred approach in future. At the end of the second period, our department shared the results with the participating doctors.

Results During 1 month, 558 patient charts were evaluated. While in the first period, the average rate of patients who are using inappropriate drugs was 51% and the number of inappropriate drugs per patient was 0.73; in the second period the results under the same categories were 9% (82.35% reduction) and 0.09 (87.67% reduction), respectively. Suggestions regarding the inappropriate oral drugs identified were: changing the pharmaceutical form (52%) and using a different drug from the same pharmacological group (40%). We couldn’t make suggestion for 8% of the cases due to a lack of suitable medicines in our pharmacy’s drug reserve. Physicians implemented 86.95% of our suggestions.

Conclusions We recommend similar studies by hospital pharmacies that provide medicines to intensive care units as one of the best ways to raise the ward’s standard of drug care.

No conflict of interest.