Recommendations for Medication Preparation in the Pharmacy

BC Childress, PharmD, MBA, MOL, BCACP, FASCP, Director of Pharmacy, Owensboro Health System in Owensboro, Kentucky, discusses pharmacists' adherence to safety guidelines.

BC Childress, PharmD, MBA, MOL, BCACP, FASCP: When organizations like the FDA or the ISMP [Institute for Safe Medication Practices] or ASHP [American Society of Health-System Pharmacists] put out recommendations to help us be safer in the care that we provide patients, we take those recommendations very seriously. For years now they've been advocating that we need to do more to ensure safety and reliability, especially in products that are going to be administered intravenously. [They recommend that] we standardize concentrations or that we use barcode technology to assure that we got the right product.

[They also recommend] we use ready-to-use formulations when they're available. That's something in our institution that we've always taken seriously. We will take the steps to make sure that we are using the best available products that reduces the amount of a potential error that's there.