Background Traditionally our organisation’s clinical pharmacists work independently. All patient Medicine Prescription and Administration Records (MPARs) are reviewed every day. This can be time-inefficient. This service evaluation seeks to determine if it is more beneficial to work independently or to participate in weekly multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings.

Purpose To evaluate the impact of two methods of pharmacy service delivery – working independently versus working within the MDT, by:

• Determining the number of pharmacy interventions for each service.

• Recording time taken for each service.

• Exploring severity of interventions for each service.

Material and methods This was a quantitative study undertaken by the senior psychiatry pharmacist. A specifically developed software program (‘SharePoint’) enabled recording of interventions. Data was recorded for MDT and non-MDT services on randomly selected weeks between January and March 2018. The ‘MDT’ group had MPARs clinically reviewed once weekly at MDT meetings while the ‘no-MDT’ group continued to have MPARs clinically reviewed daily.

Results Interventions, time taken and interventions actioned:

Conclusion The higher rate of interventions per patient and reduced time spent in the ‘MDT’ group demonstrates that working within multidisciplinary teams is a more effective use of pharmacist’s resources.

Despite increased intervention severity, the ‘no-MDT’ group were much less likely to have interventions acted upon promptly, if at all. Previous research similarly shows increased intervention acceptance when pharmacists work within teams.¹

Our psychiatry pharmacist resources are increasingly moving towards working within MDT teams.

References and/or acknowledgements 1. Bosma L, et al. Evaluation of pharmacist clinical interventions in a Dutch hospital setting. Pharm World Sci 2008; 30:31–8. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11096–007–9136–9

No conflict of interest.