5 Top-Ranked Pharmacy Stories You May Have Missed

Make sure to catch the top pharmacy headlines from this week!

5. 5 Tips for Success on Pharmacy Rotations from a Former Preceptor

Pharmacy rotations are a time to showcase your didactic coursework and prepare for your future career as a pharmacist. Therefore, it’s important to make the most of your experience.

Here are 5 helpful tips for success on your pharmacy rotations from a former preceptor:

1. Contact your preceptor in advance

2. Answer drug information questions

3. Ask questions

4. Comply with HIPAA policies

5. Work hard, but make time to relax

4. Software Alerts Pharmacists to 3 Million Potential Medication Errors

Baxter’s DoseEdge Pharmacy Workflow Manager has detected more than 3 million potential medication preparation errors prior to drugs being administered to patients.

DoseEdge integrates with hardware used in medication preparation—including barcode scanners, cameras, and gravimetric devices that measure final dose weight—to automate the process of routing, inspecting, tracking, and reporting on intravenous (IV) and oral liquid medication doses. Pharmacists can conduct preproduction checks to help identify common medication preparation errors.

DoseEdge has processed a total of 72 million medication doses since its introduction in 2008. Almost 40% of the errors that the workflow software has intercepted since then have been linked to incorrect drug use.

Injectable medications administered in the United States are associated with an estimated 1.2 million preventable adverse drug events each year, resulting in an estimated $2.7 billion to $5.1 billion in additional health care costs. Some of these errors originate in the hospital pharmacy clean room during medication compounding, and such compounding errors have led to patient deaths.

3. 3 Pharmacist Tips for New Parents

Coming home from the hospital can be an exciting and overwhelming time for new parents, and pharmacists can be a great resource for answering their medication safety questions and providing important counseling points for other safety issues like appropriate sleep environments for newborns.

Pharmacists in the hospital and community settings are in an ideal position to provide these 3 safety tips to new families:

1. Store, administer, and dispose of medications safely and appropriately

2. Provide a safe sleep environment

3. Stay up-to-date on product recalls

2. Medication Considerations in Pregnancy

Sometimes, finding the optimal therapy for a patient can be cumbersome. Many patient-specific factors go into selecting one medication out of many in various classes to treat depression, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, and other disease states. One important factor to consider is whether the patient is pregnant or planning to become pregnant, as pregnancy can change medication recommendations drastically.

Although some treatments may increase the risk of fetal harm, discontinuation of therapy might, in some cases, cause harm to the patient, which could in turn reflect on the fetus. Treatment recommendations may differ dependent on whether the patient is currently pregnant or planning to become pregnant.

1. Pharmacist, Technician Quit After Pharmacy Robbery

A pharmacist and technician quit their jobs at a pharmacy in Hawaii after a robber threatened them with a BB gun that they thought was a real weapon.

Kappa Pharmacy owner Kevin Glick told The Associated Press that the trauma from the ordeal eventually pushed the pharmacist to quit the profession completely.

The culprit behind the crime, Walter Mills, 42, previously pleaded guilty to robbing the pharmacy last year. He entered Kappa Pharmacy wearing a mask and carrying a BB gun, which he pointed at staff. He then stole nearly 2000 pills of OxyContin, oxycodone, hydrocodone, morphine, and methadone, according to court documents.

For those crimes, Mills was sentenced on July 26, 2016, to about 6 years in federal prison, in addition to 3 years of supervised release. He must also pay back more than $1000 for the value of the prescription painkillers.