Corsetti (Infant Jesus): “The role of hospital pharmacist is now central”

“The role of the hospital pharmacist with regard to rare diseases is not limited only to the management of purchases or logistics. Through some tools, such as the AIFA registers or pharmacovigilance”, this professional “plays an important role in the activity of monitoring, also supporting the clinician in this activity. In Italy the hospital pharmacist assumes a different role from international organizational models. However, only in some hospitals present in advanced realities is the hospital pharmacist allowed to manage these drugs at all stages, from ‘beginning until the hospital-territory therapeutic continuity “. Thus Tiziana Corsetti, director of Uoc Pharmacy pediatric hospital Bambino Gesù in Rome and head of the Rare Diseases Scientific Area of ​​the Italian Hospital Pharmacy Society (Sifo), speaking this morning at the presentation of the 5th Annual Report of the Orphan Medicines Observatory – Ossfor, during which she underlined that the real knot remains “hospital-territory integration”. “One of the major criticalities – the expert recalled – is the poor coordination that sometimes exists between hospital and territory, which translated means that the therapeutic paths are not defined or are not shared. All this certainly has repercussions on patients: delays in the delivery of therapy and insufficient appropriateness of care. The solution? The hospital pharmacist must be inserted as a professional figure able to mediate between these two worlds, the world of the hospital and the prescriber and that of the territory ” . Among the objectives of the hospital pharmacist, Corsetti again highlighted, there are “the implementation of the number of Diagnostic Therapeutic Assistance Pathways (Pdta), sharing them among the various Regions, the drafting of the specific handbook for rare diseases, the drafting of Standard operating procedures (Sop) internal to each hospital, by type of rare disease, and the support to the clinician (regional competition of medicines, devices and special foods). The pharmacist is responsible for the safety and efficacy of the drug and therefore must monitor the patient both after infusion and managing pharmacological toxicities “.