Handling of drug-related inquiries by hospital nurses

Objective: To determine how nurses handled drug-related questions in the work environment of a teaching hospital in Malaysia and the type of information sources they used

Method: Questionnaires were distributed in August 1996 to nurses working in various wards. The majority of respondents were staff nurses. They rated their patients as the most common category of individuals with drug-related inquiries

Results: About 58% of nurses said the most common source of reference text available at the workplace was the Drug Index of Malaysia and Singapore (DIMS) and that it was the text most of them used to answer drug-related inquiries. Although the majority of them knew the existence of a drug information centre at the hospital, 73% of nurses referred to pharmacists working in satellite pharmacies to solve drug-related inquiries

Conclusion: This survey also showed that nurses sought information on drugs from various sources and that satellite pharmacies served an important purpose in this respect.