How Do Nephrologists Accept Pharmacists’ Recommendations on Geriatric Patients’ Drug Therapy? A Brief Review

Abstract

Geriatric patients are at greater risk of drug related problems due to increased prevalence of chronic diseases and drug consumption. But at the same time, an important issue in the collaboration of pharmacists and physicians, is the acceptance of the pharmacist’s recommendations by other specialties. The present review summarizes the acceptance rate of nephrologists towards pharmacist recommendations. PubMed and google scholar were searched from 1979 to 2016. The key terms were: physician-pharmacist, physician acceptance, pharmacist intervention, elderly patients, nephrology, renal disorder, pharmacist assessment, geriatrics, physician pharmacist collaboration. The search for key terms in English and Persian resulted in 13 relevant literatures from 2011-2018. All of the studies demonstrated the positive effect of pharmacist interventions. The acceptance rate of nephrologists is over 60% (and sometimes as high as 84%) in different regions. This topic is relatively young and the specific collaboration of nephrologists and pharmacists has not been studied prior to 2011.

Keywords

• Geriatrics
• Nephrology
• Pharmacists