Patient Care Goals

Provide Pharmaceutical Care to Patients

• Assume responsibility for the drug therapy needs of patients.
• Establish a collaborative therapeutic relationship between the pharmacist and patient and/or caregiver.
• Build the patient-specific information and drug information database needed to design and implement a comprehensive patient care plan.
• Assess a patient's understanding/expectations/concerns with respect to their drug therapy.
• Collect a patient's demographics, background, medical problem list, past medical history and history of present illness.
• Identify patient-specific drug therapy problems to be resolved and/or prevented.
• Define, in cooperation with the patient and their health care providers, individualized therapeutic goals that are measurable, achievable, and time-specific.
• Appreciate the need to adapt patient care for diversity.
• Through development of a care plan, outline the practitioner and patient's responsibility to meet defined goals of therapy.
• Describe interventions required to achieve defined treatment goals.
• Provide patient-specific drug/health education.
• Use processes that help ensure continuity of patient care across health care delivery settings.
• Outline a specific follow-up plan and schedule.
• Provide ongoing evaluation of patient care.
• Evaluate the patient's status by comparing actual patient outcomes with that patient's goals of therapy.
• Document the status of each medical condition.
• Identify new patient-specific drug therapy problems to be resolved and/or prevented.
• Redesign patient care plans based on evaluation of indication, effectiveness, safety and convenience of drug therapy.
• Appropriately document patient care.
• Clearly document patient care decisions in writing.
• Prepare documentation appropriate to communicate with patients, prescribers, managers and payers.
• Document care using computer software.
• Establish a collaborative working relationship with health care providers in the community.
• Communicate patient assessment findings with the patient's health care providers.
• Verbalize patient cases to colleagues using a patient-centered case presentation.