Pharmacy education and practice in 13 Middle Eastern countries.

The Arab world has influenced the art and science of pharmacy for centuries. Pharmacy education and practice is continuing to evolve in the Arabic-speaking traditional Middle East countries, although relatively little information has been published in the English press. Our goal was to provide a high-level synopsis of conditions in this region.

Documenting drug-related problems with personal digital assistants in a multisite health system.

Purpose: A scalable, multiuser, personal digital assistant (PDA)-based documentation tool for pharmacist collection of data on drug-related problems (DRPs) is described.

Summary: A PDA-based tool for documenting DRPs and pharmacist interventions was developed with database software. Data fields were based on the pharmaceutical care model.

The impact of a pharmacist-managed dosage form conversion service on ciprofloxacin usage at a major Canadian teaching hospital: a pre- and post-intervention study.

Background: Despite cost containment efforts, parenteral (IV) ciprofloxacin appears to be overutilized at Vancouver General Hospital. In November 2003, the Pharmacist-managed intravenous to oral (IV-PO) Dosage Form Conversion Service was implemented, enabling autonomous pharmacist-initiated dosage form conversion for ciprofloxacin. This study evaluates characteristics of ciprofloxacin use prior to and following implementation of this conversion service.