The Faculty of Pharmacy discussed the Master’s Degree thesis, entitled “The impact of pharmacist interventions on antimicrobial use in pediatric wards of an Iraqi hospital,” by Jasim Kadhim Abbas and the supervising lecturer, Dr. Basma Zuheir Muhammed Naji, in the Clinical Pharmacy Department.The thesis aimed to evaluate the current clinical practice of prescribing antibiotics in pediatric wards and to assess the clinical and economic impact of pharmacist interventions on antibiotic use. The study was conducted at Al-Mahaweel General Hospital, Babel, Iraq, and included all pediatric patients, of either gender, aged ≤ 12 years who were admitted to the hospital and received antibiotic treatment.The study consisted of three phases. The first was a pre-intervention phase where data about antibiotic prescribing was collected retrospectively. The second phase involved the pharmacist’s intervention, where the pharmacist presented an oral presentation to the healthcare workers. Whereas the third phase involved prospective data collection, which was then compared with the pre-intervention data.The study included 250 children in each of the pre- and post-intervention phases. Four antibiotics were significantly less frequently used in the post-intervention phase. In addition, single antibiotic treatment was significantly higher in the post-intervention phase. Moreover, the length of therapy, days of therapy, and total cost of the antibiotics were significantly lower in the post-intervention phase. The study has demonstrated that pharmacist interventions in pediatric wards have resulted in favorable clinical and economic outcomes, which emphasizes the essential role of clinical pharmacists in enhancing antibiotic use in hospitals.
