Background In some countries, clinical pharmacy, pharmaceutical interventions and pharmacists in hospitals are lacking. The role of a hospital pharmacist is still limited to ensure the availability of pharmaceutical products and avoid their expiry. Pharmaceutical products are prepared and given to medical and surgical departments once a week by a block grant system. In order to enhance patient safety and to implement clinical pharmacy, the pharmacy department has decided, with agreement of the direction, that antibiotics will be dispensed on registered prescriptions after pharmaceutical analysis.

Purpose To describe and determine the rate of pharmaceutical interventions and to assess their acceptance by the medical team in a novel tertiary care hospital.

Material and methods We conducted a retrospective observational study including all prescriptions of antibiotics received from January to August 2015. Pharmaceutical interventions were recorded and checked in the patient’s chart.

Results 575 patients were treated by antibiotics during the study period. Prescriptions were received from medical departments (70%) as well as surgical departments (30%). 325 of 555 prescriptions (41%) were incomplete with no mention of age or weight of the patient in 61% of cases. Omissions in legal requirements on prescriptions were observed more often from surgical departments (47% vs 39%; p = 0.034). Most prescriptions (90%) were written by junior doctors. 34 pharmaceutical interventions were recorded. The most frequent type of intervention was an adjustment of dose: higher than stipulated (41%), a lower one (23%), inappropriate medicine for the treatment intended (9%), encouragement to the notification of adverse drug reactions (6%), proposition of other galenic forms (3%) and length of treatment (3%). Acceptance rate by physicians was 32% (11/34) whereas 29% (10/34) did not give any feedback when asked about the acceptance of the pharmaceutical intervention.

Conclusion Implementing clinical pharmacy is difficult when physicians do not accept pharmaceutical interventions. However, pharmaceutical interventions improve the safety of patients. An awareness of physicians about the roles of the hospital pharmacist in a patient centred culture is more than necessary.

No conflict of interest.