The roles and the impacts of pharmacists in the management of medical devices at the hospital: A literature review.

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: Identify the training profile and the published evidences about the roles and the impacts of hospital pharmacists in medical devices. METHODS: A literature review was conducted using Google, Google Scholar and Pubmed for 1990-2016 associated with a manual search conducted in three non-indexed pharmaceutical journals for 2000-2016. RESULTS: The analysis of training programs available did not allow us to identify a specific training profile. A total of 72 articles related to the roles and the impacts of the pharmacist were identified, 52 of which came from non-indexed journals. Those articles did not deal specifically about the roles and the impacts of pharmacist; however, articles were analyses for three spheres including the referencing of medical devices (n=36), the evaluation (n=19) and the distribution system (n=13). CONCLUSIONS: French pharmacists have many theoretical and practical training opportunities. There are a few articles describing precisely the roles and the impacts of hospital pharmacists in medical device. It appears urgent to better document this activity in professional and indexed literature.