Best practice documents

The topics covered among the types of Best-Practices documents are varied and dynamic. Documents are continuously developed, reviewed, updated, and discontinued on the basis of assessments of relevance to contemporiU y clinical practices and trends. Currently, a sampling of active, clinically related documents includes the following topics summarized by document type ... 

The processes used to draft and review new or revised Best-Practices documents vary, depending on the body responsible for their development and on the type of document. These processes are described in the following. Once approved, documents become official ASHP policy and are published in the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, added to ASHP s Web site, and incorporated into the next edition of Best-Practices for Health-System Pharmacy. 

The goal is to have an approvable draft within one year of the initial decision to develop a new or revised practice standard. Development usually takes one to three years, depending on the availability of drafters, the strength of the evidence, the accumulated practice experience, and the extent of the reviews and revisions. ASHP Best-Practices documents are dynamic Therapeutic documents are reviewed every three years, and... 

Besides being published in AJHP and the Best Practices for Health-System Pharmacy, Best-Practice documents are available through ASHP s Fax On-Demand service by calling (301)664-8888 and on ASHP s Web site at www.ashp. org/bcstpractices/indcx.html. 

An inventory management system should be established - meaning set up on a permanent basis to meet defined inventory policies and objectives approved by executive management. It should be documented - meaning that there should be a description of the system, how it works, the assignment of responsibilities, the codification of best practice, procedures, and instructions. The system should be planned, organized, and controlled in order that it achieves its purpose. A person should therefore be appointed with responsibility for the inventory management system and the responsibilities of those who work the system should be defined and documented. Records should be created and maintained that show how order quantities have been calculated in order that the calculations can be verified and repeated if necessary with new data. The records should also provide adequate data for continual improvement initiatives to be effective. 

The first step in a wildlife exposure assessment is to document the occurrence and persistence of a pesticide in the study area throughout the study duration. Several articles in this book describe the experimental designs and best practices to conduct field crop and environmental dissipation (air, soil and water) studies. This article presents methods to quantify spatial and temporal distributions of pesticide presence in ecosystems following normal application and resultant exposure of nontarget wildlife. 

EURACHEM Guidance Document No. CITAC Guide 2 QA Best Practice for Research and Development and Nonroutine Analysis, Working Draft 40, April 1997. Available from the EURACHEM Secretariat, Dept of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Lisbon, Portugal. 

Best practices. Therapies that researchers have found to be effective for a disorder. Chart notes (or progress notes). Notes in a client s chart that document treatment progress. 

Often, the best examples of process efficiency can be found outside the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries. Other fields such as electronics, space, and software industries have evolved their documentation, training, quality, and change control systems to the point of best in class. These industries are more time sensitive to get product to market and have often evolved their processes to be efficient and decision processes to be very quick. Process owners may expand their knowledge by investigating other industries to find best practices and apply them internally. 

A dedicated team or review board should be developed to review and approve all maturity-level deliverables upon completion of the attributes for the current level. This review board s purpose is to ensure that all deliverables meet a consistent level of quality and documentation. This board can provide feedback to process owners or QMS program group to communicate best practices and lessons learned. 

Approvals—Each of the documents described in this section is subject to formal control and approval. The best practices minimize the number of approvers, with an ideal maximum of no more than four to six individuals who have the appropriate technical understanding. Of course this must include the quality control unit, which of necessity invests in sufficient training to be able to review and approve a broad range of documents extending over all of a firm s products, equipment, processes, and systems. 

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