As a step towards realising the role of pharmacists in patient safety at the point of care in line with the Pharmacy Practice Regulations introduced by the Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) last year, KEM and Maharashtra State Pharmacy Council (MSPC) have jointly set up a patient medicine counselling centre for diabetics and patients suffering from neurological disorders like epilepsy at KEM Hospital, Mumbai.

This is the first of its kind initiative in Maharashtra to help patients get the right knowledge about rational usage of drugs with help from a dedicated pharmacist. With the coming up of the centre with pharmacists deputed from MSPC and KEM Hospital, patients will be guided on using the prescription in a practical and rationale way so that medicines are consumed properly to give the desired therapeutic effects.

Pharmacists at the centre are currently working under the guidance of Madhuri Doiphode, Superintendent of Pharmacy at KEM Hospital. The patient is guided to submit the stamped prescription from the doctor's clinic after thorough and proper investigations as guided by the physician. The pharmacist at the centre registers the patient's records and accordingly counsels him on drug usage based on the prescription with help from a Micromedex database on medicines. The centre will cater to 100 patients per day from Monday to Saturday between 9 AM to 4 PM.

Says Sheetal Chandan, Pharmacist and Co-ordinator at the centre, "Patients are generally exhausted and confused after a long arduous schedule of visiting the OPD, clinic, lab for investigations and finally to the dispensary which entails a lot of paperwork and stress. Keeping this in mind, the patient medicine counseling centre helps the patient relax and offer the patient the much needed counseling and know-how about drug use to take care of aspects like drug-drug reaction, drug-food reaction and other contraindications."

Moreover, the centre is equipped with a robust evidence based clinical reference software called Micromedex which is user-friendly and makes available evidence-based drug information and clinical answers much faster and easier. This will strengthen the process of delivering clinically important, relevant and unbiased information on medicines to pharmacist and patients.

This according to the MSPC officials will dispel a lot of misconceptions with regards to medical prescription, adverse drug reactions, drug usage, dosage and time schedule for patient safety.