Ten Tips Palliative Care Pharmacists Want the Palliative Care Team to Know When Caring for Patients

The Role of an Inpatient Hospice and Palliative Clinical Pharmacist in the Interdisciplinary Team

Palliative care is a specialized health care service for individuals with serious illness at any stage and can be provided in any setting. Current national consensus developed by palliative care experts recommends the inclusion of pharmacists in an interdisciplinary team (IDT) to provide quality palliative care. However, national registry data report that less than 10% of inpatient palliative teams in the U.S. have a clinical pharmacist. Clinical pharmacists have an impactful role in palliative patients' quality of life by optimizing symptom management, deprescribing, and providing education to the palliative care team as well as patients and their families. In this report, we review the current literature on the role of a palliative pharmacist in an inpatient palliative care setting and compare and contrast this with our own clinical practice, providing case examples about the role of a palliative clinical pharmacist in an interdisciplinary inpatient palliative care setting. Future strategies are needed to increase post-graduate specialized pharmacy residency training in palliative care as well as education on palliative and hospice care in pharmacy schools to support the role of clinical pharmacists in palliative care.

Top Ten Tips Palliative Care Clinicians Should Know About Psychopharmacology

Palliative care (PC) providers often prescribe psychotropic medications to address psychological and physical suffering of patients with serious medical illness. Consideration must be given to the significant medical comorbidities of the patient when selecting a medication. This article seeks to provide guidance on how to safely and effectively select a psychotropic agent for depression, anxiety, and other distressing symptoms for patients with serious illness. To do so, we draw upon a team of physicians and a pharmacist with training in psychiatry and PC to highlight the "Top 10" tips for selecting a psychotropic medication to provide relief for patients with serious medical illness.