(1302) Evaluating the Benefits of Pharmacists' Participation on the Emergency Resuscitation Team

Introduction: Pharmacists’ participation on the hospital resuscitation team has shown to increase compliance to advance cardiac life support (ACLS) guidelines. Unfortunately, pharmacist participation during resuscitations is inconsistent because of the lack of training or limited hours worked.
We hypothesize that pharmacist involvement during resuscitations at our site can also lead to better adherence to ACLS guidelines and appropriate non-ACLS mandated medication use compared to when there is no pharmacist participation. We also sought to understand the role of pharmacists on the team as perceived by other team members.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective case review of all resuscitations performed from January 2017 to December 2019 comparing events with pharmacist participation with no pharmacist participation. Cases were excluded if the patient did not require emergency medical treatment. Outcome measures include compliance to ACLS guidelines, appropriate medication use, and survival of code blue. Team members completed an anonymized qualitative survey assessing the perception of the pharmacist role on the resuscitation team.

Results: A total of 231 resuscitation events were assessed for eligibility. A total of 117 events were included in the final analysis after applying the exclusion criteria. Pharmacists were present for 32 (27%) of the total events. There were 81 (69%) events requiring ACLS and 36 (31%) non-ACLS emergency treatment. Compliance to ACLS guidelines were 91% when pharmacists were present vs 70% when there were no pharmacists (P=0.04). Appropriate non-ACLS mandated medication use was 94% vs 74% (p=0.01) respectively. There was no difference found in survival to code blue or survival to discharge. A total of 50 surveys were completed by the resuscitation team. Most members (66%) have experience working with a pharmacist during resuscitation. Sixty-four percent (64%) felt that it was at least moderately important to have a pharmacist participate in the team.

Conclusions: The involvement of a pharmacist in the emergency resuscitation team at our site is associated with a higher compliance to ACLS guidelines and appropriate medication use. Team members felt it was important to have a pharmacist regularly participate during resuscitations.