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We are pleased to see how physicians make good use of pharmacists in medical practice.1 There are constantly debates on whether pharmacists’ involvement can reduce physicians’ workload. Some expressed concerns about patient safety and medical records with pharmacist involvement.2 As ex-pharmacists and now physicians, we want to suggest the following tasks to be delegated to pharmacists:
1. Monitoring drug therapies: Dosing drugs like warfarin, vancomycin and aminoglycosides can be like chasing your tail. Non-adherence to immunizations is an ongoing public health concern. Pharmacists are trained to perform pharmacokinetic monitoring and intramuscular injections. Why not let those experts to monitor patients’ drug levels and adherence to therapies?
2. Adverse drug reactions: Documented penicillin allergy requires systematic assessment, due to increased risk of MRSA and C difficile mediated by alternative antibiotic uses.3 Established allergy assessment methods, such as Naranjo algorithm, are time-consuming and may not be achievable during a 10-minute consultation. Why not let our pharmacists to aid with adverse drug reaction assessment, which was shown to complement the drug history taken by physicians?4
3. Medication reconciliation: Medication discrepancies post-hospital discharge are frequent patient safety risks. We have worked in one hospital where pharmacists draft discharge medi...
Competing Interests: We have been paid for working as physicians and pharmacists, but not for writing this letter.