As you provide pharmaceutical care to your patients, you intervene to alter the drug therapy of individual patients to give them the greatest opportunity of achieving the desired therapeutic goal. This represents a great service to your patients, and thousands of Canadians across the country benefit from pharmacists' involvement in their care. However, many of the problems requiring intervention from pharmacists occur over and over again. For example, you have probably intervened many times to have the dose of a medication altered because of impaired or improved drug clearance, such as occurs with changes in renal function. Similarly, recent interest in medication reconciliation reflects a recognition that interventions to address inappropriate drug therapy have been frequently required at points of transfer in care. The challenge to all care providers, including pharmacists, is to recognize situations in which drug therapy is repeatedly suboptimal and to initiate processes so that future patients will not have the same experience. With this in mind, are you recognizing the contributory factors to suboptimal care, and are you doing something about these problems?
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