Role of the pharmacist within the heart failure team

Abstract

Hyogo Prefectural Amagasaki General Medical Center has formed a heart failure team. Here, I report on the role of the pharmacist in this heart failure team at this hospital. Patient education is one of the roles of the pharmacist. It is the pharmacist’s responsibility to improve medication adherence among patients. For this purpose, the pharmacist uses a brochure created by the heart failure team. The brochure outlines drug information in an easy-to-understand manner. The roles of a pharmacist were addressed in a lecture presented to the heart failure team. These lectures helped improve the pharmaceutical knowledge of the team, allowing the team to prescribe medicines more safely and appropriately. Maintaining co-operation between hospital and community pharmacies is another important role of a hospital pharmacist. This allows patients to be properly educated by pharmacists even after discharge from the hospital.