Background The adult Department of Neurology is a 42-bed unit that includes an inpatient neurology ward, an inpatient stroke unit and a 10-bed neurological intensive care unit. The computerised physician order entry system available in our hospital is Omnipro. It enables the pharmacy resident to consult the cause of hospitalisation, nurse care, surveillance of medical parameters and to analyse prescriptions.

Purpose To describe the pharmacists’ interventions (PIs).

Materials and Methods The resident validated prescriptions every day, could consult medical files in the Neurology ward and attended medical clinical rounds twice weekly. When a problem was identified in a prescription, the resident discussed it directly with the physician. Every PI was collected using a validated record sheet (Conort et al, J Pharm Clin, 2004).

Results The resident made 95 interventions during the eighteen-week study period. The physician acceptance rate of these recommendations was 92%. The most commonly identified drug-related problems were: inappropriate administration (19%), non-indicated drug (17%) and under dosage (12%). Nervous system drugs (24%), alimentary tract and metabolism drugs (17%) and cardiovascular drugs (14%) were the most frequently involved.

Conclusions The regular presence of the pharmacy resident on the neurology ward enabled him to be well integrated and to become familiar with inpatient specificities in the neurology department. Collaborative working relationships between pharmacists and physicians are the key to success and to reducing the number of potentially inappropriate prescriptions. The high physician acceptance rate is a good indication of intervention relevance. Recurrent problems were identified during this study. Data on interventions were presented to the pharmacy and therapeutic committee.

No conflict of interest.