A way to evaluate the peculiarities of drug information centers in university hospitals

The aim of this work was to identify the characteristics of the drug information provided by the Drug Information Center (DIC) of a university hospital. A cross-sectional study was conducted, identifying the profile of information requests (IRs) from January 2008 to December 2009, before and after restructuring. Several parameters were evaluated. The results revealed that this DIC showed a mean of 5.5 IR/month in 2008 and 20.3 in 2009. The majority of IRs came from medical residents (22.7 %) in 2008 and from pharmacists (32.5 %) in 2009. The most recurrent types of IRs were administration route/mode (16.8 %) in 2008 and drug stability (13.1 %) in 2009. The results revealed the importance of the DIC in the hospital, and the restructuring experience could be of help to other DICs in Brazil.Colegio de Farmacéuticos de la Provincia de Buenos Aire