Staff, pharmacy

Much more widely, we owe a great deal to all the many manufacturers, distributors, health facility staff, pharmacy and drug shop staff, policy makers, regulators, researchers and others who have patiently answered the questions of authors of these chapters and participated in workshop discussions of the findings. 

University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy Staff Physician... 

Members of the institutional staff are familiar with the current literature and are generally aware of innovative thought and practices by their peers. As physicians become aware of the skill, availability, and importance of pharmaceutical compounding and that they can literally have almost any medication they need, in the form and strength they need for a specific situation, they generally request it more often. As the institutional pharmacy staff demonstrates expertise and problem-solving skills, the medical staff consistently calls upon them [14]. 

A pediatric patient was presented to the emergency room (ER) experiencing seizures for which 150-mg Cerebyx (fosphenytoin anticonvulsant) IV was ordered. The pharmacy technician took the call for Cerebyx and delivered three 10-mL vials of Cerebyx 50-mg PE (phenytoin sodium equivalents) per mL to the ER as a floor stock transaction. A nurse misread the 50-mg PE/mL on the 10-mL container label, making the assumption that the entire vial contained 50 mg PE. The contents of all three vials were prepared for administration. Instead of 150 mg PE, the patient was administered ten times the intended dose, or 1,500 mg PE. The patient later died. The ER staff only discovered the error after the patient s blood phenytoin levels were returned from the laboratory. 

Thanks also go to staff and students at the Department of Pharmacy especially Amanda Calleja and staff at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery. I would like to acknowledge the assistance received from staff at Pharmaceutical Press, particularly Christina DeBono and Louise Mclndoe. 

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. 

For several years Bussy taught pharmacology in the medical school at the Ecole de Pharmacie, and in 1856 he served as president of the Academy of Medicine. For fifty-six years he served on the editorial staff of the Journal de Pharmacie et de Chimie. He died at Paris on February 1, 1882, at the age of eighty-seven years (22). 

In the hospital setting, drugs are prescribed on a particular page of the patient s hospital chart called the physician s order sheet (POS) or chart order. The contents of that prescription are specified in the medical staff rules by the hospital s Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee. The patient s name is typed or written on the form therefore, the orders consist of the name and strength of the medication, the dose, the route and frequency of administration, the date, other pertinent information, and the signature of the prescriber. If the duration of therapy or the number of doses is not specified (which is often the case), the medication is continued until the prescriber discontinues the order or until it is terminated as a matter of policy routine, eg, a stop-order policy. 

In the consultant pharmacy proposal, planning of processes and operations will include estimation of the number and types of pharmacists (or other staff) that will be needed to provide the proposed services. Ted will also need to determine the job requirements (i.e., must have completed a geriatrics certificate program)... 

It was reported by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) in 2000 that fewer than 5 percent of physicians were writing prescriptions electronically. In a 2000 white paper entitled, A Call to Action Eliminate Handwritten Prescriptions within 3 Years, ISMP recommended the use of electronic prescribing by clinician order entry to reduce medication errors (ISMP, 2000). CPOE can help to reduce errors in the delivery and transcribing of orders to the pharmacy where the orders are filled. Order management can be used to control inventory and alert pharmacy staff (and even the patient) of the status of a prescription. For example, some national chain pharmacies have the capability of alerting the patient by phone or e-mail if a prescription is ready or if other action needs to be taken before the prescription can be picked up. The system should also be able to report results, such as the number of prescriptions filled, the revenue generated over a specified time, and medication error reports. 

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