OPINIONS DOCUMENTING PHARMACEUTICAL CARE: CREATING A STANDARD

OBJECITVE: To examine the need for a standardized, systematized approach to document patient pharmacotherapy, workable in all pharmacy practice settings, and to propose a model to meet the identified needs. DATA SOURCE: A MEDLINE search was conducted, in addition to an assessment of current practices and a review of known sources of pharmacotherapy/pharmaceutical care evaluation and documentation methodology. CONCLUSIONS: Pharmacy lacks a universally accepted, standardized, systematized approach to document the evaluation of a patient's pharmacotherapy. An approach is presented that distills the concepts of pharmaceuticalcare into a manageable documentation format and provides a custornizationof the medical history and physical exarninationlsubjective-objective-assessment-plan system to meet the unique needs of pharmacy. This approach provides a convenien