The involvement of pharmacists in professional and clinical audit in the UK: a review and assessment of their potential role.

This review addresses the uptake and implementation of the principles of audit by community, hospital and health authority pharmacists. The pressures to audit professional services are discussed, as are the barriers to cooperation among pharmacists and between pharmacists and prescribers in primary care. The development of standards of professional practice is then described taking into account the particular difficulty in developing standards for health care workers who are geographically separated from other members of the primary care team and are in commercial competition with each other. The review identifies audit of professional services in both community and hospital pharmacy and of clinical services in the latter. The role of pharmacists employed by health authorities to advise them and general practitioners on the optimum use of the drug budget is described and their potential role for involvement in audit is discussed. The particular advantages that pharmacists in hospital and health authorities have in developing the specific aspect of clinical audit related to medicines usage (drug utilization review) is then described. The potential for pharmacists to contribute to clinical and management audit is discussed.