Ward round participation: A ward round is a visit made by a medical practitioner, alone or with a team

of health professionals and medical students to inpatients at their bed side to review and follow up the
progress in their health .

1. Types of ward round:

 Teaching round : Where interns, registrars and specialists go from patient to patient to
test the knowledge of the more junior doctors and train them in how to identify
particular conditions and determine treatment.
 Pre round :- This is a largely learning opportunity for interns to familiarize themselves
with new admission and transfers
 Traditional ward round : Attended by different health professionals caring for the
patient to discuss how the patient is progressing and future plans for care.
 Working round: where the medical team visits patients to review their condition and
plan their care.
2. Goals of the ward round participation :
 Gain improved understanding of patients clinical status and progress, current planed
investigations and therapeutic goals.
 Provide relevant information on various aspect of patients drug therapy such as
pharmacology,kinetics, drug availability cost, drug interactions and adverse drug
reactions
 Optimize therapeutic management by influencing drug therapy selection,
implementation, monitoring and follow up.
 Investigate unusual drug orders or doses
 Assimilate additional information about the patients such as co-morbidities medication
compliance or alternative medicine use that might be relevant to their management
 Detect adverse drug reaction and drug interactions
 Participate in patient discharge planning
3. Role of pharmacist in ward round participation

The pharmacist being an expert in the matters of drug should be available for the ward
round team to decide upon the matters of

 Dosage regimens
 Formulary interpretations
 ADR monitoring
 Drug-drug interactions
 Drug-food interactions
 Drug and poison information services.
The availability of pharmaceutical services definitely enhances accuracy of treatment,
patient safety and efficacy.
4. Duties of the pharmacists in ward rounds
  The pharmacist in ward round should take to 2 times one with the doctors and another
one with himself alone.
 In the first ward round he follows the treatment given and checks the formulary for the
dose prescribed.
 Further he may also critically think any possible risk to the patients due to drug
administered he will alert the team and prevents the further causality that would have
occurred due to non-viability of clinical pharmacy services.
 In the 2nd round the pharmacist targets the patients prior to discharge and advice the
patients regarding discharged medication practice in the rounds.
 He also motivates to knowledge diet and exercise required for disease management for
a patient to be discharged.
5. Benefits of the Multidisciplinary Ward Round
 Enhanced quality and safety of patient care
 Increased patient satisfaction
 Timely and safe discharge
 Effective collaborative care delivery
 Improved documentation
 Identification of and response to individual and team learning needs
 Fostering of leadership
 Increased awareness of the resources needed by specialty patient groups
 Appropriate and effective use of available resources & a reduction in costs
 Increased staff satisfaction & enhanced professional relationships