Definition, functions of hospital pharmacy, Organization structure
Definition of Hospital Pharmacy
Hospital pharmacy functions for receiving, storing, and dispensing drugs and medicines to patients. The hospital pharmacy may also manufacture pharmaceuticals and parenteral products. The department provides a range of pharmacy services for hospitalized and ambulatory patients, including purchase, manufacture, compounding, storage, dispensing, distribution, and maintaining records for the same.
Hospital pharmacy is the health care service, which comprises the art, practice, and profession of choosing, preparing, storing, compounding, and dispensing medicines and medical devices, advising healthcare professionals and patients on their safe, effective, and efficient use.
Functions of Hospital Pharmacy
The various functions performed by a hospital pharmacy are:
1) It attains a supply of drugs, chemicals, and biological and pharmaceutical formulations only from licensed vendors and manufacturers.
2) It inspects the received items and maintains an inventory for the same.
3) It dispenses drugs, chemicals, and pharmaceutical preparations to the patients. The pharmacists repack the medicament in appropriate containers and label them.
4) It keeps a record of all the narcotic drugs and alcohol received and issued.
5) It predicts the demand for drugs, chemicals, antibiotics, biologicals, radiopharmaceuticals, etc., and takes suitable steps to fulfill the demand.
6) It keeps a record of each supply dispensed.
7) It manufactures large volumes parenteral and other drug preparations in case of unavailability, high cost, or lack of authentic vendors or caution.
8) It implements strict control on the quality of the supplies received, manufactured, and dispensed.
9) It discusses the drug-related information with the medical staff, resident nurses, health care team, and the patients.
10) It participates in minimizing the incidence of illness and improves the general health of the population.
11) It provides patient counselling.
12) It implements the recommendations of the pharmacy and therapeutic committee.
Organization Structure
The hospital pharmacy has various divisions, like compounding and dispensing, manufacturing or production, quality control, central sterile supply, research, education and training, administration, and library.
The Chief Hospital Pharmacist is the head of the pharmacy who reports to the Administrator. The number of Assistant Chief Pharmacist, who assists the Chief in administration, depends on the work, nature, scope of operations, staff strength, etc. Assistant Chief Pharmacist supervises and controls the various functions of the pharmacy.
The Chief has a secretary and other office clerks to assist him. Staff pharmacists, technicians, pharmacy helpers, and other workers of the hospital pharmacy are involved in compounding, dispensing, manufacturing, drug supply, central sterile supply, and library duties.
Final Year B Pharm Notes, Syllabus, Books, PDF Subjectwise/Topicwise
Suggested readings
Recommended readings:
- Pharmaceutics I Theory
- human anatomy and physiology
- Social Pharmacy Theory
- Definition and Scope Social Pharmacy
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Roll on deodrant base ingredients
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Use Aartificial Intelligence for optimisation of pharmaceutical formulation
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Bayesian approch for optimisation of pharmaceutical formulation