Scoping research output from tertiary hospital pharmacy departments: suggestions for improvement

Abstract

We read with great interest the benchmarking scoping review by Penm et al.¹ on research output from principal referral hospital pharmacy departments in Australia from 2018 to 2020. This review allows departments to compare their research output with others and encourages a strong research culture within hospital pharmacy departments.

The Australian hospital peer groups² report published by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) was used to determine which hospitals were classified as principal referral hospitals in the review, with principal referral hospitals defined as public acute hospitals providing a broad range of services with highly specialised service units and large patient volumes.² This report from 2015 remains the most recently published,³ though at least two new tertiary hospitals have opened in Australia since 2015.^{4, 5}

Fiona Stanley Hospital (FSH) is a 783-bed public quaternary hospital, which became fully operational in February 2015. The hospital fulfils the AIHW definition of a principal referral hospital, though it was absent from the 2015 AIHW hospital peer groups listing. The pharmacy department at FSH is making an increasing contribution to the peer-reviewed biomedical literature across a range of clinical and operational disciplines. The AIHW data also list hospitals in Western Australia (WA) which had closed by 2015 (Royal Perth Hospital Shenton Park campus and Kaleeya Hospital), as well as others which have closed subsequently, either prior to or during the 2018–2020 research window examined (Swan District Hospital and Princess Margaret Hospital for Children).² Although this is a scoping review, the hospital landscape is rapidly evolving, and we would caution against using reports that are likely to be outdated for the purposes of benchmarking. FSH pharmacy research output was not included in the scoping review,¹ suggesting that a second source was not utilised to validate the principal referral hospitals which were operational during the 2018–2020 time period.

Using the methods detailed in the scoping review,¹ we assessed the research output for the FSH pharmacy department from 2018 to 2020. Nine unique articles were located (one clinical trial, five observational studies, and three case reports). Four (44%) of these articles had a member of the pharmacy department as the first author, and eight (89%) articles had at least one author with a university affiliation. This output reflected the findings of Penm et al., Australia-wide. Adding the FSH output to the primary count resulted in a total of 21 articles (7% of the national total) published by WA pharmacy departments between 2018 and 2020.

We acknowledge the difficulty in obtaining current lists of Australian hospitals experienced by the authors. One way to increase the accuracy of hospital lists could be to use additional directories specific to hospital pharmacies which are updated more frequently, such as the Australian Medicines Information Services directory or Directory of Hospital Pharmacy, published by the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia. This measure, along with the inclusion of paediatric tertiary referral institutions, would further improve the impact of this excellent initiative.

All listed authors comply with the Journal's authorship policy.

No ethics approval was required for this letter due to the nature of the article.