Journal of Pharmaceutical Care & Health Systems
Open Access

Abstract

A Five-Year Review of Patient Focussed Medicine Information Queries at a Large UK Teaching Trust: Assessing the Trends, Predicting the Future

Nadwa Alkhaldi, James Desborough, David Wright, John Wood and Tim House

Objectives: To describe trends in the use of a medicine information (MI) service located within a large teaching university hospital in order to enable a workload model to be developed.
Method: All MI enquiries within one large teaching hospital received in the same two months from 2006 to 2010 were reviewed to collect enquiry category, complexity level, origin, enquirer and time taken to process enquiry. Level 1 complexity enquiries required one reference source for completion, level 2 required the use of multiple and more specialist sources whilst level 3 require multiple sources and the evaluation of primary literature. Data was analysed descriptively to enable trends in MI queries to be identified. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to predict time taken to complete enquiries.
Results: 1605 MI enquiries were analysed. The total number of enquiries received during the 2 months from 2006 was 238 compared to 343 in 2010. 583(36.3%) of enquiries were due to administration of medicines, 211(13.1%) therapy choice and 204(12.7%) related to supply