Running a Pharmacy: How to Keep Your Workers and Patients Safe

The people who work at a pharmacy are aware of importance of personal and patient safety. Even after school, they go through hours of training for each company they work for. They renew their safety training on a yearly basis, and incorporate any new requirements at any given time. In a pharmacy, employees handle a variety of different types of medication. Included in the list are oral, topical, rectal, intramuscular injections and intravenous medications.

Following Guidelines

So how can a pharmacy keep everyone safe? Following procedural guidelines and using proper technique are the best ways to keep not only the pharmacy employees safe, but also the patients. When a pharmacy technician prepares to enter the IV Room, they are to follow a list in exact order to ensure they are as clean as possible. These steps are completed in what is call the Clean Room, or Ante Room. Once they are fully dressed and sanitized, they may enter the IV Room. The IV Hood, where they prepare the IV mixtures, must be properly cleaned, along with any materials used. Again, an exact order must be followed to ensure patient safety.

IV Prep

Once the technician is ready to prepare the IV, they must use specific movements with their hands, to ensure proper air flow inside the hood. They must be careful not to stick themselves with a needle. If anything spills or sprays inside the hood, they must clean it immediately. There is an eyewash station in the Ante Room in the case of any medication getting into the eyes, along with what to do next.

Precision

It is also important to be precise. For instance, some medications need to reconstituted from a powder to a liquid before they can be used. They must use an exact amount of the proper fluid to reconstitute the medication, or an error has been made. They must also know what type and volume bag they will be using for the IV mixture, if they have to remove fluid from the IV bag they plan to put the medication into, and the dosage of the medication(s) being put into the bag. Each step is a place where errors may happen. The technician must calculate the proper dosage and draw the right amount out of the vial(s). Some medications are used more than the allotted times a vial is allowed to be stuck by a needle, so they require a special adapter, called a vial spike. The technician must document when a new vial was reconstituted and/or used for the first time because the expiration date/time changes according to this. Some medications are only good for a twenty minutes once reconstituted, while others may be good for thirty days once the stock vial has been used.

Supplies

Proper ordering of supplies is crucial, because a pharmacy would not be able to use some medications without proper supplies. You can get the proper supplies to handle these medications from companies like Equashield. Without supplies such as vial adapters, reconstitution tubing, and IV tubing, the medications can cause harm to the patient.