Implementation and monitoring of decisions by pharmacy and therapeutics committees in South African public sector hospitals

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The National Drug Policy in South Africa has achieved its objective in establishing and strengthening Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committees (PTCs) in public sector hospitals. However, little is known about the implementation of decisions by PTCs and the monitoring thereof. Consequently, there is a need to investigate this.

Areas covered: We sought to address this via an online survey distributed to pharmacists working in public sector hospitals across South Africa with perceived functioning PTCs, with a 32.3% response rate to the survey.

Expert commentary: Membership of all PTCs included a pharmacist, who in most cases (51.2%) held the secretariat position. Principal PTC activities were encouraging rational medicine use (RMU) (86.0%), pharmacovigilance (82.6%) and implementing standard treatment guidelines (STGs) (77.9%). Only a third (37.5%) stated that they were using indicators to monitor PTC performance. Where collected, indicator data were mostly used for providing feedback to PTCs (83.3%). Most hospitals (95.1%) implemented PTC decisions; however, 62.0% mentioned guidelines on implementing PTC decisions did not exist in their hospital. The majority of respondents (65.4% and 83.8%, respectively) indicated PTC decisions were evaluated and reviewed in their hospitals. Overall, a high percentage of respondents stated the main activities of PTCs were to enhance RMU as well as implement STGs. However, guidelines on implementation of decisions by PTCs are currently lacking and most PTCs were not monitoring their performance. This needs to be addressed.

KEYWORDS:

• Pharmacy and therapeutics committee
• hospitals
• indicators
• decision implementation
• South Africa

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Author contributions

All authors contributed in the study design. TPM developed the data collection tool with contribution from MM and JCM. TPM collected and analyzed the data. All authors participated in the interpretation of the data and the study results. TPM wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors commented on the paper and agreed on the final version.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the various Provincial Departments of Health and hospitals for granting approval to conduct the study in their hospitals and the public sector pharmacists part of the hospitals who participated in this study.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

The student's tuition for the masters was funded by NRF-DAAD. This study was self funded.