Fostering empathy and self-efficacy in pharmacy students through service learning.

Background: Pharmacy student proficiency in direct patient interactions is an integral component of the doctor of pharmacy curriculum. Service-learning experiences offer pharmacy students valuable opportunities to develop self-efficacy and empathy while serving communities with unmet needs. The objective of this review is to evaluate the impact of service-learning experiences on the self-efficacy and empathy of pharmacy and other health professions students.

Optimizing Pain Management Through Opioid Deprescribing.

The use of opioid drug therapy in older adults has increased over the past decade. Although use of opioid drugs may be clinically warranted, ongoing use needs to be monitored closely to evaluate risks and benefits, especially with the potential for adverse events and misuse. An opioid drug deprescribing protocol would provide clinicians with a method to assess an individual's need for opioid agents, as well as a systematic process to taper opioid drug therapy when deemed appropriate.

The Cost of Self-Reported Penicillin Allergy: A Systematic Review.

Background: Patients who report a penicillin (PCN) allergy receive suboptimal antibiotic therapy compared with patients not reporting an allergy. However, a majority of patients who report PCN allergy are not truly allergic on confirmatory testing. Ruling out PCN allergy by testing may improve clinical and economic outcomes for patients with reported allergies requiring antibiotic therapy.

Gestational iron deficiency is associated with pica behaviors in adolescents.

A relation between pica (the craving and purposive consumption of nonfood items) during pregnancy and anemia is observed frequently. However, few studies related pica behaviors to biomarkers of iron status, and little is known about pica prevalence in U.S.

Prospective observational study of Klebsiella bacteremia in 230 patients: outcome for antibiotic combinations versus monotherapy.

Combination antimicrobial agent therapy has been advocated for treatment of gram-negative bacteremia, including that caused by Klebsiella spp. We performed a prospective, observational, 10-hospital collaborative study to evaluate the efficacy of antibiotic combination therapy versus that of monotherapy for 230 consecutive patients with Klebsiella bacteremia. The species involved were K.