Pharmacy services for safe parenteral nutrition

Abstract Globally, approximately one-third of all adult patients admitted to hospital are malnourished, contributing to increased morbidity and mortality, poor quality of life, longer hospital stays, and higher healthcare costs. Parenteral nutrition (PN) is an important but complex interventional therapy for improving nutritional status. Management of PN is the responsibility of specially trained healthcare professionals. This is to minimize the risks from infection, drug/nutrient, or drug/drug compatibility. These important issues can be improved and limited with the key involvement of a pharmacist in a multidisciplinary nutrition support team (NST). Our study demonstrates, in the absence of an NST, a trend of increased length of hospital stay in malnourished patients with pneumonia and stroke, a higher rate of hospital readmission for malnourished patients with pneumonia, acute myocardial infarction, stroke, and heart failure, and higher average variable costs. A unified multidisciplinary team approach leads to cost-effective and safe nutrition therapy.