Pharmacy Procedures

Pharmacy procedures can identify some errors. Requests for missing doses or evaluation of returned (unadministered) doses could identify breaks in fhe system that might have caused errors. 

The structure of the definitions of the clinical activities has been incorporated within the national standards for classification in health in Australia. SHPA collaborated with the Australia National Centre for Classification in Health (NCCH) to develop pharmacy procedure codes within the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Health Related Problems Australian Modification.The classification has subsequently been piloted in 28 hospitals to develop a standard approach to the documentation of clinical services to individual patients. - ... 

Publications by NIH Clinical Center clinical oncology pharmacists have received national attention and improve pharmacy practice processes examples include ways to standardize expression and nomenclature of cancer treatment regimens " and pharmacy procedures for dealing with gene therapy products. 

Your first day or two will probably be an induction whirlwind, covering everything from pharmacy procedures and psychiatry refreshers to IT access. Make sure you know how to ... 

The successful performance of dispensing and compounding operations in a pharmacy depends on a thorough understanding of the principles of the prescription balance and strict adherence to the procedures of its care and use. Therefore, it is essential to learn proper weighing techniques, and to be conscious of the limitations of the balance to weigh certain quantities. All pharmacies are required to have a Class A prescription balance which meets the requirements of the National Bureau of Standards. It is based upon the principle of torsion. Some states may allow the use of a balance other than the Class A prescription balance, provided that their sensitivity requirement is six milligrams or less. 

Experienced senior staff of the sponsor must always visit the investigator site before a new clinical trial starts, even if the investigator has been involved in previous studies. Most pharmaceutical companies have checklists and SOPs of the requirements of an investigator site. Key questions will need to be answered relating to staff support and the present workload of the site. The competence of the staff to conduct any procedures, the maintenance, calibration and QC of any equipment to be used, and whether other clinical trials demand too much resource are aU questions that need answers. In addition, the facilities should be inspected to establish whether the site could store and securely archive the large amounts of documents and study drugs that will be present. The pharmacy may play a major role in the study and therefore the facility and the pharmacist should be visited. 

S.W. Sun, Experimental and statistical approach for validating a test procedure in a pharmaceutical formulation, Ph. D. thesis, Laboratoire de Chimie Analytique, Faculty de Pharmacie, Montpellier, 1993. 

Tribromomethane [75-25-2] (bromoform), CHBr3, is usually sold mixed with up to 3—4% ethanol as a stabilizer. The pure liquid has mp, 7.7°C bp, 149.5°C cP A, 2.8912 g/mL 19D 1.5980 (87). Water solubility is about 0.3 g/100 g at 25°C. Bromoform is prepared from chloroform by the replacement procedures indicated (88). The classical method of preparation involves reaction of acetone and sodium hypobromite the latter may be generated from sodium hypochlorite and a bromide (89). Uses have been found in syntheses, in pharmacy as a sedative and antitussive, in gauge fluids, and as a dense liquid for separating minerals. Traces of bromoform and bromochloroforms are likely to be present in municipal waters and wastes as a result of chlorination in the presence of naturally occurring bromide ions and humic substances (90). Removal can be accomplished by adsorption on activated charcoal. 

Touting it as a nerve tonic, doctors began to prescribe tincture of marijuana for a variety of conditions. However, pharmacies posted a warning that large doses of this medicinal remedy were dangerous and considered narcotic (addictive). In addition, physicians found that cannabis stimulated the appetite. By 1887, dentists found hemp to be an excellent topical anesthetic for performing dental procedures on their patients. Cannabis was also found to be a powerful disinfectant. 

Technology that digitally captures patient signatures, encryption software, and telecommunication all may be necessary to protect the privacy of patients and the security of pharmacy data. Pharmacists also must ensure that affiliated businesses are using proper procedures to protect any information they handle on behalf of the pharmacy. Even transactions necessary for the business functions of a pharmacy must be secure to protect patient identity. 

Clinical outcomes measures can include morbidity and mortality, event rates, and symptom resolution (Ovretveit, 2001). These measures are a direct measure of quality but may be difficult to assess, especially in pharmacy, where their onset could be years following a treatment or intervention (Chassin and Galvin, 1998 Shane and Gouveia, 2000). In these cases, indicators or markers can be used to assess outcomes. These indicators can be condition-specific (e.g., HgAlc) or procedure-specific (e.g., rate of postoperative infection after hip surgery) or address an important issue of patient care. For example, blood pressure may be used as a marker to assess susceptibility to stroke because it is not practical, safe, or ethical to wait and measure the occurrence of stroke. 

If a pharmacy organization does not want to develop its own CQI plan, help is available. Pharmacy Quality Commitment (PQC) has developed the Sentinel System for community pharmacies. This system, which incorporates best practices, risk-management techniques, and systematic procedures to increase quality, is ready to use and is available from the National... 

Provides oversight and feedback to pharmacy technicians that ensures quality care and adherence to departmental policies and procedures. 

The director of pharmacy is responsible for the creation of policies and procedures to manage expenditures. These include, but are not limited to, group purchasing, utilization review protocols, and cost-effective clinical pharmacy services (Goodwin, 1995). In their efforts to manage expenditures, hospital pharmacy directors are faced with a set of unique challenges unlike those seen in community pharmacy. While all... 

One positive advancement for pharmacy is that Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes have been developed specifically for MTM services provided by pharmacists. These codes are a standard used within health care to bill for goods and services. Separate codes have been developed for an initial encounter of 15 minutes of MTM service for a new patient (99605), initial encounter of 15 minutes of MTM service for an established patient (99606), and additional 15-minute increments (99607). While there has yet to be widespread use of these CPT codes by pharmacists, it is anticipated that their use will increase as plans implement MTM services involving pharmacists (American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, 2007). 

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