The Council of Australian Therapeutic Advisory Groups (CATAG) (2013) define a Pharmaceutical and Therapeutics Committee (PTC) as a ‘multi-disciplinary team committee with a commitment to the overall governance of the medicines management system in health service organizations to ensure the judicious, appropriate, safe, effective and cost-effective use of medicines’. The multi-disciplinary team includes the health care providers, who are actively participating in the health care systems, such as doctors, pharmacists, nurses, administrators, finance officers, quality improvement managers and other staff members who participate in the medicine use processes according to their knowledge and skills. The major role of this committee is to evaluate and promote rational drug use by health care providers and consumers. In addition, this committee is responsible for developing systems and strategies to prevent adverse medicine reactions and medication errors, enhance rational prescribing and dispensing, provide educational activities and ensure the use of quality and cost-effective medicines. This is a cross-sectional study that was aimed at exploring the structure, activities and functions of public sector institutional Pharmaceutical and Therapeutics Committees (PTC) in the Eastern Cape (EC) Province in South Africa (SA). The primary objectives of the study were to (i) investigate and describe the structure, functions and the activities of the institutional PTCs, and (ii) explore and describe the perception of PTC secretariats on the functionality of the institutional PTCs. A purpose-designed questionnaire including both quantitative and qualitative aspects adapted from other international studies was piloted prior to being used for data collection. The secretariats of the institutional PTCs were requested to complete the questionnaire. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics for the quantitative aspects and thematic analysis for the qualitative component of the questionnaire. Data collection commenced after approval by the relevant ethics committees had been granted. The findings of the study reflected that the majority of the PTCs in the EC province, SA are district/sub-district PTCs which are a cluster of a number of health care institutions in close proximity. The PTC members were appointed by the executive authority as recommended by the literature and other guiding documents. As expected the nurses were dominant as the members of the PTCs in these district/sub-district PTCs. The secretariats were the pharmacists where pharmacists were available and chairperson were doctors. These findings correspond to the recommendations by the National Department of Health PTC policy (2015) and the studies conducted in other countries. A number of PTCs had sub-committees formed e.g. ABC analysis review committee, medicine utilization evaluation (MUE) committee and pharmacovigilance committee to optimise their functionality. Out of 15 PTCs only five PTCs with sub-committees reported functions and interventions, establishment of policies and SOPs. The rest had no outcomes or interventions reported. Poor production of policies and SOPs was observed which differs from other countries’ PTCs. The focus of sub-committees in other countries is the development of formulary and policies related to medicine use. These findings pose a question regarding the functionality and effectiveness of the existing institutional PTCs in the province. In addition, the basic documents that are required to run the PTC were unavailable in a number of PTCs. Barriers to the functionality of PTCs were reported i) Lack of pharmacists and training in PTCs. ii) The rural nature of the EC province and iii) Unavailability of resources including lack of re-imbursement of personal costs. These findings reveal that budget allocation for institutional PTCs is crucial for their functionality. It can be concluded that in the EC province the institutional PTCs which are active and effective are low in number and do not cover all geographical areas. Secondly there is a need for training and educating the PTC members on the role of the PTC members, role of sub-committees, development of policies, SOPs and the basic documents for the functionality of the committee. It is also important that during training the monitoring and evaluation of the effectiveness of the committee is emphasised. Therefore, the choice of the PTC objectives should be measurable as they can assist as indicators of effectiveness. Support by the executive authority has been observed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:28293 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Henge-Daweti, Vatiswa |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Health Sciences |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MA |
| Format | ix, 57 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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