Centro de Informação sobre Medicamentos - CIM: avaliação da informação prestada

Providing information about medication, an essential function of pharmaceutical practice to ensure rational drug use, is an important activity of hospital pharmacy services. The Drug Information Center of Onofre Lopes University Hospital (DIC-HUOL) initiated its activities in 1979 with the first Clinical Pharmacy Service in Brazil. The aim of this study was to assess information provided by DIC-HUOL, describing the profile of passive information offered by the center. A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted to identify the profile of information requests (IR). One hundred percent of the IR received by the DIC between January 2008 and December 2009 were used. The results were divided by year to determine the influence of the restructuring process that occurred in 2008 and 2009. The study at DIC-HUOL showed a mean of 5.5 IR/month in 2008 and 20.3 IR/month in 2009; the mean of the last year is comparable to that of other Brazilian DIC. Most of the IR were made by medical residents (22.7%) in 2008 and by pharmacists (32.5%) in 2009. The significant use of the DIC by medical residents may be due to its location in a university hospital. The most recurrent types of IR concerned issues related to pathway/mode of administration (16.8%) and drug stability (13.1%) in 2008 and 2009, respectively. Requests were made verbally in 100% of the cases in 2008 and 78.8% in 2009, owing to the fact that most of the DIC users were professionals from the hospital itself. Time elapsed between request and response was not reported in 83.3% and 21.3% of the cases in 2008 and 2009, respectively. The most widely used bibliographic source during the two years was MICROMEDEX®, with 41.9% and 39.2%, respectively. The restructuring process had a positive influence on the DIC-HUOL, exhibiting similar parameters to those of other Brazilian DIC, but some of these parameters must be improved to achieve international standards