Validation of an instrument for the documentation of clinical pharmacists' interventions

Objective To validate an instrument for documentation of clinical pharmacy interventions in French speaking hospitals in France and outside of France. Method A panel of 12 French speaking clinical pharmacists (six from France; six from French speaking countries) was asked to analyse a set of 60 pharmacist's interventions on drug prescription. They used a form including (1) the identification of the drug related problems (DRPs) (10 items), (2) the pharmacist's intervention (7 items). We assessed the level of agreement between the 12 pharmacists on the test DRPs and on the interventions. Main outcome measures Kappa coefficient of concordance was used to assess the level of agreement between experts for DRPs and interventions. We also assessed the userfriendliness of the instrument using Likert scales. Results The level of concordance observed in the validation was 0.76 for DRPs and 0.89 for the type of intervention. Eleven experts out of 12 were "very satisfied" or "satisfied" and one "not satisfied" with the tool. Ten out of the 12 experts were ready to use it in daily practise. Conclusion The present instrument proposed by the French Society of Clinical Pharmacy (SFPC) is the first coding system for pharmacist's interventions with a French interface. The validation process using a standard statistical methodology helps support the external validity of our tool. The level of concordance between users can be considered as satisfactory, allowing the use of the tool in daily clinical pharmacy practise. To enhance the diffusion of the instrument and of the general process of routine documentation of interventions, a spreadsheet is provided on the French Society of Clinical Pharmacy website.