AmInfoPall - Drug Information Palliative Medicine

Support Drug Information by pharmacists

​

The hotline supports healthcare professionals in decisionmaking and helps to make drug therapy of palliative care patients safer and more effective.

​

Background:

​

Drug therapy is an integral part of  palliative care. In order to prevent patients from avoidable harm  by medicines, it is necessary to carefully analyse available treatment options, which is often demanding due to insufficient data. Moreover, in everyday clinical practice, there is often a lack of time and resources to realise patient-centered risk-benefit assessment for each patient’s drug therapy on the basis of current literature and available alternatives.

​

The project AmInfoPall offers a cross-sector, free-of-charge hotline for physicians, pharmacists and nursing staff on inquiries regarding palliative medication in german-speaking countries. Especially pharmaceutical knowledge on drug administration is essential. The pharmacists answers inquiries by telephone or e-mail on weekdays. After inquiring “the question behind the question” to research and evaluate the literature in a time-efficient manner and writing an answer there will be a second look by a clinical experienced pharmacist. Quality assurance during the process is guaranteed by guidance on Drug Information of the drug information working group of the german hospital pharmacist association. The hotline wants to support an individual approach to drug therapy to find the best choice for the patient and to reduce symptom burden of palliative care patients.

​

The aim of the project "Palliative Care Drug Information Service" is to increase drug safety during drug therapy and thus patient safety in outpatient and inpatient hospice and palliative care by providing easy access to necessary information. The Palliative Care Drug Information Service is integrated into the Competence Center for Palliative Pharmacy Care at the Department of Palliative Medicine at the LMU Klinikum München. The Competence Center for Palliative Pharmacy Care combines all clinical-pharmaceutical activities of the department.

​

The Palliative Care Drug Information Service of the Department of Palliative Medicine at the University Hospital of Munich has become an established hotline. To date, a total of over 1200 inquiries from Germany, Switzerland and Austria have been received and answered. In 2020, it was awarded first place in the Patient Safety Award of the Aktionsbündnis Patientensicherheit.

​