Drug Therapy Communication Plan

Drug Therapy Communication Plan

Question description

Discussion: Mr. Smith brings his 4-year-old to your office with chief complaints of right ear pain, sneezing, mild cough, and low-grade fever of 100 degrees for the last 72 hours. Today, the child is alert, cooperative, and well hydrated. You note a mildly erythemic throat with no exudate, both ears mild pink tympanic membrane with good movement, lungs clear. You diagnose an acute upper respiratory infection, probably viral in nature. Mr. Smith is states that the family is planning a trip out of town starting tomorrow and would like an antibiotic just in case.

For Drug Therapy Communication Plan, create a communication plan for Mr. Smith and/or families for both prescriptive and non-prescriptive drug therapies. Describe what you would tell Mr. Smith and the child. Provide resources that Mr. Smith could access which would provide information concerning your decision.

Drug Therapy Communication Plan  Assignment Requirements:

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• be sure to read the Assignment description carefully (as displayed above);
• consult the Grading Rubric (under the Course Home) to make sure you have included everything necessary; and
• utilize spelling and grammar check to minimize errors.

Heart failure (HF) is a progressive and complex clinical syndrome that can occur due to impairment of cardiac structure or function that leads to the inability of the heart to fill with or pump sufficient amount of blood to meet the metabolic need of the body [1–3]. HF is a major public health problem that affects about 26 million peoples worldwide [4,5]. In spite of effective pharmacotherapy, HF remains the leading cause of morbidity, mortality and economic burden for health care budgets [6, 7].

Heart failure management often involves lifestyle modification and lifelong therapy with multiple medications, and the list of medications has expanded considerably since the last three decades [8]. HF treatment has been largely an add-on phenomenon; thus, optimal HF therapy has become increasingly complex [8, 9]. According to evidence-based guidelines, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs), beta-blockers (BBs), angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs), hydralazine with long acting nitrates, and spironolactone have all been shown to decrease morbidity and mortality in HF [1,3,10]. Despite this, medications for HF are often underutilized [10–12].

Drug therapy problem (DTP) refers to any unwanted incident related to medication therapy that actually or potentially affects the

desired goals of treatment [13,14]. DTP can occur at all steps of the treatment process, mainly during prescribing, transcribing, dispensing and patient use of medication therapy [15]. DTPs are categorized into seven major classes. These include; unnecessary drug therapy, need additional drug therapy, ineffective drug therapy, dosage too low, dosage too high, adverse drug reaction (ADR) and non-compliance [14].

Drug therapy problem is one of the public health problems worldwide and has been significantly increased over the past few decades [16]. It was estimated that around 5–10% of hospital admissions were due to DTPs, in which more than half of them are avoidable [16]. Worldwide, more than half of all medicines are prescribed and dispensed inappropriately and half of the patients fail to take them correctly [17,18]. Although most medications are beneficial with excellent safety profile, DTPs may compromise the quality of life, increase hospitalization, increase overall health care cost and even leads to death if not detected and resolved early [19].

Drug therapy plays a crucial role in the treatment and improvement of the well-being of HF patients. However, the benefits of drugs brought to patients may be compromised due to the occurrence of DTPs. DTPs are frequent in HF patients mainly owing to multiple prescriptions, multi-comorbidities, and advanced age [8,20,21]. In patients with HF and other cardiovascular diseases, the frequency of DTPs has been reported to be as high as 78% and 69%, respectively [22, 23]. The majority of preventable HF hospitalizations, deaths and increased health care cost are due to poor adherence to the use of approved evidence-based medications [24]. It has been reported that about 17% of HF patients may experience adverse effects of their medication and ADR-related hospitalizations account for 6.7% of admissions of HF patients to cardiac units [25].