Clinical Pharmacist Interview Questions and Answers

Clinical pharmacists play a crucial role in healthcare settings, they are specialized in the choice of medications and ensuring their safe and effective use.

Here we mentioned few common interview questions and answers on clinical pharmacist

Q. What is a clinical pharmacist?

A clinical pharmacist is a healthcare provider, who provides direct patient care, medication therapy management and patient counseling. Clinical pharmacists work directly with other healthcare professionals to optimize patient care.

Q. What does a clinical pharmacist do?

A clinical pharmacist reviews patient profiles, counseling patients, provides drug information and works with healthcare providers to improve patient care.

Q. What do you mean by Adverse drug reactions (ADRs)?

Adverse drug reactions (ADRs), also known as ‘side effects’, ‘adverse drug events’, or ‘drug misadventures’, are a frequent cause of morbidity in hospital and the community.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defi nes an ADR as follows: ‘a drug-related event that is noxious and unintended and occurs at doses used in humans for prophylaxis, diagnosis or therapy of disease or for the modifi cation of physiological function.’

Q. What do you mean by Drug Interactions?

Drug interactions occur when the effect of a drug is altered by the co-administration of any of the following:

another drug.
food.
drink.

The outcome of this is as follows:

frequently clinically insignificant
sometimes beneficial
occasionally potentially harmful.

Read also: Drug Interacting Substances

Q. How to manage drug interactions?

Check whether or not the drug combination is new.
If the patient has already been taking the drug combination, have they tolerated it? If yes, there is probably no need to change therapy, although monitoring might be required.
Is the interaction potentially serious (e.g. signifi cant risk of toxicity or d drug effect) — in which case seek alternatives.
Is the interaction potentially of low to moderate signifi cance — in which case it might only be necessary to monitor side effects and therapeutic effect, or arrange TDM.
Remember that some drugs in the same class can have different potentials to cause interactions (e.g. ranitidine versus cimetidine).
Remember that not only do interactions occur when a drug is started, but unwanted effects can also occur when a drug is stopped.
The elderly are at greater risk of drug interactions, because of polypharmacy and impaired metabolism and excretion. Additive side effects can be a particular problem.
Be aware of high-risk drugs and always check for potential interactions with these drugs:
- enzyme inhibitors and inducers (e.g. erythromycin, rifampicin, phenytoin, and protease inhibitors)
- drugs with a narrow therapeutic index (e.g. warfarin, digoxin, lithium, phenytoin, theophylline, and gentamicin).
Remember that interactions can occur with non-prescription drugs, which the patient might not tell you about:
- herbal or traditional medicines
- over-the-counter medicines
- recreational drugs, including alcohol, tobacco, and drugs obtained by other means, such as sildenafi l purchased on the internet.

Q. What do you mean by Anaphylaxis?

Anaphylaxis is defined as an immediate systems hypersensitivity event produced by IgE-mediated release of chemicals from mast cells and basophils.

Theoretically, prior exposure to the agent is required and the reaction is not dose- or route-related, but in practice anaphylaxis to injected antigen is more frequent, severe, and rapid in onset than following exposure to oral or topical antigen.

Read also: Antigens and Immunoglobulins

Signs and symptoms of anaphylaxis

Urticaria
Angioedema
Dyspnoea, wheeze
Nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, cramping abdominal pain
Flush
Upper airway oedema

Q. What does the prescription or chart tell you about the patient?

Age — think about special considerations in children and the elderly.
Weight — is the patient signifi cantly overweight/underweight? Will you need to check doses according to weight?
Ward name or consultant — may tell you the presenting illness (if this is not already obvious).
Other charts can also provide important information — e.g. diet sheets, blood glucose monitoring, BP, and temperature.

Q. How to review prescribed drugs?

Check each drug on the prescription carefully. Newly prescribed drugs are the highest priority, but it is important to periodically review old drugs.

Are the dose, frequency and route appropriate for this patient, their weight and their renal function?
What is the indication for the drug?
Is it appropriate for this patient?
Does it comply with local or national guidelines or formularies?
Could the drug be treating a side effect of another drug — if so, could the fi rst drug be stopped or changed?
Are there any potential drug interactions (see b p.20 )?
Are they clinically signifi cant?
Do you need to get the interacting drug stopped or changed, or just monitor for side effects?
Is therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) required?
Do you need to check levels or advise on dose adjustment?
Are levels being taken at the right time?
Is the drug working?
Think about the signs and symptoms (including laboratory data and nursing observations) you should be monitoring to check that the drug is having the desired effect. Are any symptoms due to lack of effect? Talk to the patient!
Are any signs and symptoms due to side effects?
Do you need to advise dose adjustment, a change in therapy, or symptomatic treatment of side effects? Remember that it is sometimes appropriate to prescribe symptomatic therapy in anticipation of side effects (e.g. antiemetics and laxatives for patients on opioids).
Check that the patient is not allergic to or intolerant of any of the prescribed drugs. This is usually recorded on the front of hospital prescription charts or you might need to check the medical notes or talk to the patient. Community pharmacy PMRs often record drug allergies or intolerance.

Ensure that you have looked at all prescribed drugs. Hospital prescription charts usually have different sections for ‘as required’ and ‘once-only’ (‘stat’) drugs and IV infusions. Many patients might have more than one prescription chart, and some might have different charts for certain types of drug (e.g. chemotherapy).

Q. What parameters are to be checked during drug history (DHx) taking?

When taking the DHx, remember to obtain details of the following:

Drug name
Dose
Frequency
Formulation
Duration of treatment
Indication
Any problems with medication, such as with administration (e.g. inhaler), ADRs, or allergies
Is the patient taking their medication according to the prescribed instructions?

Q. What does medication review involve?

A structured critical examination of a patient’s medicines (prescription and other medicines, including alternatives) by a healthcare professional.
Identifi cation, management, and prevention of ADRs or drug interactions.
Minimizing the number of medication-related problems.
Optimizing the use of medicines.
Simplifi cation of regimen.
Ensuring all drugs are appropriate and needed.
Avoiding wastage.
Medication counselling.
Adherence counselling — to encourage patients to adhere to their drug regimens.
Assessment of ability to self-medicate.
Education of patient or carer — to help them understand their drugs better.
Education of the patient on safe and effective medication use.
Forum for suggesting effective treatment alternatives.
Recommendation of compliance aids.

Q. How do you monitor a patient’s response to a drug?

Depending on the specific medication and condition being treated, pharmacists monitor relevant clinical parameters. This could include vital signs (e.g., blood pressure, heart rate), laboratory values (e.g., kidney function, liver enzymes), symptoms (e.g., pain levels, mood changes), or disease-specific markers (e.g., blood glucose levels in diabetes).

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