Our results show that fewer than half of the respondents (41%) claimed to have observed a serious ADR (potentially life-threatening or requiring hospitalization), although almost all (97%) believed that pharmacists should take some action when a serious ADR is suspected. The influence of the practice setting, the number of years in practice, and the number of hours worked per week influenced the reporting practices and attitudes.

Background: Medication Reconciliation and Medication Safety are two themes emphasized in a variety of healthcare organizations. As a result, health care facilities have established methods for obtaining a patient's medication history. However, these methods may vary among institutions or even among the health care professionals in a single institution, and studies have shown that patients are reluctant to disclose their complementary and alternative medicine use to any health care professional. This lack of disclosure is important in surgical patients because of potential herbal interactions with medications and drugs used during the surgical procedure; and the potential for adverse reactions including effects on coagulation, blood pressure, sedation, electrolytes or diuresis. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to identify patterns of natural product use, to identify potential complications among patients scheduled for surgery, to improve existing medication reconciliation efforts, and to develop discontinuation guidelines for the use of these products prior to surgery.

This study demonstrated that students are becoming familiar with ADR and MER programs via the college curriculum; however, there is opportunity for greater exposure and understanding. Colleges of pharmacy should continually seek methods to strengthen the education provided to pharmacy students regarding these programs.

This Hospital Pharmacy feature is extracted from Off-Label Drug Facts, a publication available from Wolters Kluwer Health. Off-Label Drug Facts is a practitioner-oriented resource for information about specific drug uses that are unapproved by the US Food and Drug Administration. This new guide to the literature enables the health care professional or clinician to quickly identify published studies on off-label uses and determine if a specific use is rational in a patient care scenario. References direct the reader to the full literature for more comprehensive information before patient care decisions are made. Direct questions or comments regarding Off-Label Drug Uses to jgeneral@ku.edu.

T he fentanyl transdermal system (FTS) is designed to deliver a continuous dose of fentanyl, a potent opioid analgesic. Adverse events related to toxicity include sedation and respiratory depression, particularly in the opioid-naïve patient and when the FTS is abused or misused. To minimize the risk of severe and potentially fatal adverse drug events (ADEs), national warnings and guidelines outlining the safe use of the FTS have been released, including a boxed warning restricting its use to moderate to severe chronic pain conditions in the opioidtolerant patient.1 The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also released statements in 2005 and 2007 outlining appropriate prescribing, dose selection, and safe use of the FTS.2 In 2012, the FDA approved the extended-release (ER) and long-acting (LA) opioid analgesics risk evaluation mitigation strategy (REMS), and The Joint Commission published a sentinel event alert related to the safe use of opioid analgesics, including the FTS, in the hospital setting. ABSTRACTBackground: National safety guidelines were developed to minimize the occurrence of serious adverse drug events (ADEs) associated with the use of the fentanyl transdermal system (FTS), however, reports of use in opioid-naïve patients for treatment of acute pain and associated ADEs continue to occur. Objective: To evaluate the prescribing patterns of the FTS for adherence to recent US regulatory recommendations and identify the impact of health information technology (HIT) on adherence rates. Methods: A retrospective pre-and postintervention analysis was performed in hospitalized adult patients receiving FTS. Electronic medication order instructions and text questions were incorporated into FTS electronic medication orders. The primary outcome measure was adherence of FTS medication orders to regulatory guidelines defi ned as (a) a new order in an opioid-tolerant patient for use in moderate to severe chronic pain or (b) continuation of the documented home dose in use for at least 7 days. Safety measures included respiratory rate and documented ADEs. Results: Adherence rates were signifi cantly increased in the postintervention cohort as compared to the preintervention cohort (48.7% vs 85.0%; P < .0001). Incidence of ADEs was signifi cantly lower post intervention (34.7% vs 23.3%; P = .043), including a lower incidence of respiratory depression (16.7% vs 8.3%; P = .043). Documentation was increased in the postintervention cohort (76% vs 100%). However, supporting documentation confi rmed responses in only 59.2% of records reviewed. Conclusions: Incorporation of HIT via electronic order text questions increased overall adherence rates to regulatory recommendations, increased documentation, and decreased the rate of associated ADEs.

This Hospital Pharmacy feature is extracted from Off-Label Drug Facts, a publication available from Wolters Kluwer Health. Off-Label Drug Facts is a practitioner-oriented resource for information about specific drug uses that are unapproved by the US Food and Drug Administration. This new guide to the literature enables the health care professional or clinician to quickly identify published studies on off-label uses and determine if a specific use is rational in a patient care scenario. References direct the reader to the full literature for more comprehensive information before patient care decisions are made. Direct questions or comments regarding Off-Label Drug Uses to jgeneral@ku.edu.

Background: Abstract presentations at professional meetings provide a medium for disseminating the findings of scholarly activity. Rates of abstract publication from various biomedical disciplines have been evaluated, with pharmacy noted to be lower than other specialties. Previous research on pharmacy abstract publication rates was conducted for a limited number of professional meetings but has not been assessed using Google Scholar. Objective: To determine the full publication rate of abstracts presented at the 2005 American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) Spring and Annual Meetings, American Pharmacists Association (APhA) Annual Meeting, and American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) Summer and Midyear Clinical Meetings. Methods: Publication status was assessed for abstracts presented during the 2005 ACCP Spring and Annual Meetings, APhA Annual Meeting, and ASHP Summer and Midyear Clinical Meetings using PubMed and Google Scholar. Data collected included abstract category, study category, practice site, database(s) in which publication appeared, time in months to publication, publication type, and journal of publication. Results: Evaluation of 2,000 abstracts presented in 2005 revealed an overall full publication rate of 19.8% (n 5 384). Nearly all pharmacy abstracts were published as manuscripts (98.4%; n5378) and indexed in PubMed and Google Scholar (91.9%; n 5 353), although a significant percentage were indexed in Google Scholar only (7.8%; n 5 30). The mean time to full publication was 16.8 months (SD 611.9 months). Conclusions: Results were consistent with previously reported full publication rates of abstracts from pharmacy association meetings, indicating that abstracts presented at pharmacy meetings continue to have a lower full publication rate than other health disciplines.Key Words-abstracts, journals, meetings, pharmacy, publications Hosp Pharm-2013;48(3):219-226 A bstract presentations at professional meetings provide a valuable medium for disseminating the findings of scholarly activity, with representation from a broad spectrum of topic categories and practice settings. Abstract data are typically published by the respective organization and may also appear in secondary databases such as International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, Ovid, PubMed, and Google Scholar; however, the data contained within many abstracts may never be published in complete manuscript format.Rates of abstract publication from various disciplines have been previously evaluated. subsequent to abstract presentation at pharmacy association meetings have been significantly lower than other health disciplines. 4-7Previous research on pharmacy abstract publication rates has been conducted for a limited number of professional meetings, but pharmacy abstract publication status has not been assessed using Google Scholar. Google Scholar provides search results encompassing peer-reviewed publications, theses, books, abstracts, and articles from a variety of organizations and thus can potentially retrieve a gr...

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