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PRP Insights: Profile Check in Community Pharmacy
The Practice Review Program’s Pharmacy Professionals Review is grounded upon Board-approved focus areas that were identified as having the most impact on patient safety. One such focus area is the Profile Check, which is a fundamental role pharmacists play within the healthcare team as medication experts.
The results from practice reviews show us that most registrants are compliant in this area. However we are still seeing instances where registrants are unaware of the requirements for a profile check and when it needs to be done.
The Health Professions Act (HPA) Bylaws require a full pharmacist to review prescriptions for completeness and appropriateness, and review patient personal health information for drug therapy problems, therapeutic duplications, and any other potential problems. A full pharmacist must also review PharmaNet before dispensing a drug and take appropriate action if necessary.
This means that for every prescription (both NEW and REFILLS), a full PHARMACIST must review the LOCAL PROFILE and PHARMANET to assess the appropriateness of drug therapy and resolve any drug therapy problems. In fact, at the time of dispensing, every prescription in community pharmacy must include written confirmation of the pharmacist who reviewed PharmaNet.
It’s important to note that although PharmaNet’s Drug Use Evaluation (DUE) and some local pharmacy software can provide useful information such as drug-to-drug interactions and duplicate therapy, they are simply supplementary tools that cannot replace a pharmacist’s assessment of drug therapy and up-to-date clinical pharmacy knowledge. Therefore, it is not acceptable to delegate a Pharmacy Technician or assistant to alert the pharmacist for a profile check only when flagged by the system, because every prescription requires a pharmacist profile check.
For an example of what can go wrong when a profile check is not properly completed, please see: What Went Wrong: Patient Profiles and Adverse Drug Reactions
For additional information on Profile Checks, please refer to the full Profile Check Focus Area.
This article is part of a series exploring each of the four Board-approved focus areas. To read the rest of the series, please use the following links:
- Practice Review Program, PRP Insights
