31/01/2026
DOCTORS AND PHARMACISTS
COLLABORATION - A WINNING PRESCRIPTION
Doctors receive substantial pharmacology training but pharmacists add a different, drug‑focused expertise, and studies show that ignoring pharmacists’ input can miss important chances to prevent errors and improve safety.
In the Indian MBBS competency based curriculum, pharmacology in the second year alone accounts for about 230–233 teaching hours (lectures, practicals, tutorials and self‑directed learning). This covers mechanisms, indications, contraindications, adverse effects, essential medicines, fixed‑dose combinations, OTC drugs and nutraceuticals. However, during later clinical years the focus shifts more to diagnosis and overall management than to in‑depth, day‑to‑day medicine information such as brand formulations, interactions across complex regimens, or hospital formulary details.
Pharmacists are trained to focus almost entirely on medicines: pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics in special populations, drug-drug and drug-disease interactions, dosing adjustments, formulation and administration issues, and medication use systems. Clinical pharmacists in hospitals routinely review prescriptions, detect errors (dose, frequency, route, duplications, contraindications), and suggest safer or more effective alternatives.
Multiple studies in hospitals show that when pharmacists systematically review and intervene on prescriptions, prescribing error rates fall sharply and potential patient harm is avoided. For example, one multicenter initiative reported a median of 39 intercepted prescribing errors per 1,000 patient days, with about half having the potential for serious or life‑threatening harm, underlining the critical role of pharmacist review. Another study showed that clinical pharmacist interventions reduced prescribing errors from 27.6% to 2.9%, an 89.5% relative reduction. In pediatric settings, pharmacist interventions significantly reduced dosing errors, with more than 90% of pharmacists’ recommendations accepted by physicians.
Qualitative research on doctors’ and pharmacists’ views finds that both groups generally believe collaboration is effective and desirable, but there are barriers like lack of clear organizational pathways, legal frameworks, and sometimes limited physician awareness of pharmacists’ qualifications. In such studies, “mutual reluctance” and role uncertainty are reported, even though attitudes to collaboration are overall positive. Surveys of pharmacists show that the vast majority contact physicians at least weekly to clarify prescriptions, and they express a wish for more structured, faster communication channels with prescribers.
Given the evidence that pharmacist interventions prevent serious or life‑threatening medication errors and greatly reduce overall prescribing error rates, routinely ignoring pharmacists’ input would be difficult to justify from a patient‑safety perspective. While doctors rightly remain the primary decision‑makers for diagnosis and overall treatment plans, medicines have become so numerous and complex that optimal care usually requires integrating the pharmacist’s specialized knowledge rather than relying solely on the pharmacology studied during MBBS/MD.
Regards,
JAKSTAR PHARMA
