Clinical Pharmacology & Biopharmaceutics
Open Access

Abstract

Home care is the provision of specialized, relevant pharmaceutical products e.g., medicines, clinical assessment and monitoring of patients in their homes. The study aimed to identify and quantify benefits of home visits by pharmacists to patients to provide care. Convenient sampling technique was used to select 60 patients based on age, accessibility and their disease condition from Pillbox pharmacy database. Participating patients gave written consent and were assured of confidentiality of their data. Six pharmacists participated in the exercise and were randomly selected from the list of pharmacists within Mainland Local Government Area. The subjects were educated on chronic disease management and PC prior to the intervention, after which patients were assigned to the pharmacist. The pharmacist provided PC to patient at no charge for four months, using our systematic approach to the delivery of PC. This approach included development and use of various documentations such as patients database file, record cards, etc. Patient education and monitoring of patient vitals such as blood pressure, fasting plasma glucose were done by the Pharmacists. Data collected was analysed using the SPSS software. The difference in the means of patients Fasting Plasma Glucose (FPG), before and after the intervention was 1.04?0.61 (SD), P<0.05. Hence, there was a statistically significant difference in patient FPG before and after Home Care Visit. There was a statistically significant difference in patient blood pressure (BP) value before and after the intervention as the mean BP was 0.850?0.48 (SD), p<0.05. This study has shown that pharmacists? practice of home care visits can significantly improve patient health status.

Biography

Fatima Salawu Abdulhakeem Ikolaba has completed her MSc in 2009 and is currently a PhD student at the Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Biopharmacy, University of Lagos. She is an Lecturer at the same department. She has presented two papers (poster presentation) at the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) Congress in Beijing, China in 2007 and one poster presentation at the Pharmaceutical Scientist World Congress (PSWC) in New Orleans, USA in 2010. She offers voluntary and free pharmaceutical care to patient with chronic disease at Pillbox Pharmacy, Onike, Lagos and Nigeria.