Pharmacy Student Impact on Inappropriate Prescribing of Acid Suppressive Therapy

Objective. To examine the impact that having pharmacy students on internal medicine patient care teams had on inappropriate prescribing of acid suppressive therapy (AST). Methods. In this observational cohort study, internal medicine patients who received care from teams with a pharmacy student were compared to patients who received care from teams without a pharmacy student. The primary endpoint was proportion of patients on inappropriate AST. Results. The overall proportion of patients receiving inappropriate AST was 24.4%. There was no significant difference between patients seen by teams with a pharmacy student and those seen by teams without a pharmacy student. The proportion of patients discharged with new inappropriate AST prescriptions was lower after pharmacy student review, though not significantly (6.1% vs. 9.4%, p = 0.07). Pharmacy student reviews shortened the median duration of inappropriate AST by 1.5 days (6 vs. 8.5 days, p = 0.025). Conclusions. Patient care teams on which pharmacy students performed medication reviews had a reduced duration of inappropriate use of AST in patients.