Download - Ontario College of Pharmacists

Best Possible
Medication Histories
Ambika Sharma is a third year pharmacy student at the Lesley Dan Faculty of
Pharmacy at the University of Toronto. The following paper is the result of Ambika's
research into the practice, in some hospitals, of having pharmacy technicians rather
than pharmacists perform the BPMH.
Are pharmacists or
pharmacy technicians
the best possible
healthcare professionals
to perform them?
Ambika Sharma, Pharmacy Student
A Best Possible Medication History
(BPMH) is a medication “history created
using a systematic process of interviewing
the patient/family, and a review of at
least one other reliable source of
information to obtain and verify
all of a patient’s [prescribed and
non-prescribed] medication use” 10 .
The completion of BPMHs in the
hospital setting is a necessary part
of the larger practice of medication
reconciliation, which seeks
to compare the medications the
patient regularly uses with those
ordered for the patient in-hospital;
this is followed by a correction
of any discrepancies to reduce
potential patient harm 10 . According
to the Canadian Adverse Events
Study (2004), medication use was
the second most common area
for adverse events, and was the
source of 24% of preventable
adverse events. This study,
along with many others from
the Institute for Safe Medication
Practices, illuminated the
need for medication reconciliation
(and thus, BPMHs) in order to minimize
medication error by both the patient and
the institution 3 . With the recent expansion
of the role of the pharmacist into
more clinical domains, there has been
a concomitant push for the expansion
of the role of pharmacy technicians. A
posited avenue of pharmacy technicians’
PAGE 26 ~ WINTER 2013 ~ PHARMACY CONNECTION