Objectives: To describe a medication reconciliation (MR) procedure prepared by the pharmacist for patients admitted for elective surgery and to assess the surgeon's degree of acceptance.
Methods: A 1-year retrospective observational study was conducted. The patient population consisted of patients aged ≥18 years admitted during 2016 for elective surgery and whose planned length of hospital stay was >24 hours. A pharmacist performed MR following a specific protocol. A review of the reconciliations prescribed later by the surgeons was conducted. Statistical analyses were performed for qualitative and quantitative variables.
Results: The pharmacist prepared a total of 1986 reconciliation reports. The 179 patients reviewed in this study had a mean age of 65.7±11.8 years, 49.2% were women and 98.9% of patients were reconciled by the surgeon in the operating theatre using an electronic prescribing system (85.5% were fully reconciled).
Conclusion: The hospital's MR protocol resulted in almost 100% of patients being reconciled within the subgroup of elective surgery patients by the prescribing surgeons.
Keywords: elective surgery; medication errors; medication reconciliation; reconciliation reports.