Collaboration Between Pharmacists and Nurses in Enhancing Patient Compliance and Outcomes

Abstract

Pharmacist-nurse collaboration is a key variable for effective health delivery to ensure optimal patient care and outcomes. Collaboration is defined as a process by which pharmacists and nurses communicate and make joint decisions to be implemented for the benefit of patients and the healthcare system. A patient-centred model for collaboration highlights the complementary roles of pharmacists and nurses in assessing patient needs and delivering care. Pharmacists assess needs related to drug therapy and medicines management while nurses provide a broad bio-psychosocial assessment of needs, coordinate care and advocate for patients using the whole-health perspective. Effects of collaboration include improved patient compliance, smooth transitions in care, avoidance of adverse drug reaction or interaction, effective chronic disease management, provision of health promotion and greater medication adherence (Kristeller et al., 2017) (Labrador Barba et al., 2017). Continuous teamwork enables pharmacists and nurses to deliver more sustainable improvements in patient health