Hospital Pharmacy

These medication errors have occurred in health care facilities at least once. They will happen again—perhaps where you work. Through education and alertness of personnel and procedural safeguards, they can be avoided. You should consider publishing accounts of errors in your newsletters and/or presenting them in your inservice training programs.

Your assistance is required to continue this feature. The reports described here were received through the USP Medication Errors Reporting Program (MERP), which is presented in cooperation with the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP). If you have encountered medication errors and would like to report them, you may call USP toll-free, 24 hours a day, at 800-233-7767 (800-23-ERROR).

Any reports published by ISMP will be anonymous. Comments are also invited; the writers' names will be published if desired. ISMP may be contacted at the address shown below.

Errors, close calls, or hazardous conditions may be reported through the ISMP (www.ismp.org) or United States Pharmacopeia (USP) (www.usp.org) Web sites or communicated directly to ISMP by calling 800-FAIL-SAFE or via e-mail at ismpinfo@ismp.org. ISMP guarantees the confidentiality and security of the information received and respects reporters' wishes as to the level of detail included in publications.

The purpose of this feature is to heighten awareness of specific adverse drug reactions (ADRs), discuss methods of prevention, and promote reporting of ADRs to the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) medWatch program (800-FDA-1088). If you have reported an interesting preventable ADR to medWatch, please consider sharing the account with our readers.

This continuing feature will update readers on recent developments in cardiovascular pharmacotherapy. Cardiovascular disease remains the number one killer in the United States and more clinical outcome trials have been conducted in cardiology than in any other field of medicine. Given this rapidly expanding knowledge base, pharmacists can have a significant impact on prevention and treatment—if they keep current with developments in drug therapy.

The increasing complexity of cancer chemotherapy now requires that pharmacists be familiar with these highly toxic agents. This column will review various issues related to preparation, dispensing, and administration of cancer chemotherapy, and review various agents, both commercially available and investigational, used to treat malignant diseases.

Off-Label Drug Uses — This Hospital Pharmacy feature is extracted from Off-Label DrugFacts, a quarterly publication available from Wolters Kluwer Health. Off-Label DrugFacts is a practitioner-oriented resource for information about specific FDA-unapproved drug uses. This new guide to the literature will enable the health care professional/clinician to quickly identify published studies on off-label uses and to determine if a specific use is rational in a patient care scenario. The most relevant data are provided in tabular form, so the reader can easily identify the scope of information available. A summary of these data—including background, study design, patient population, dosage information, therapy duration, results, safety, and therapeutic considerations—precedes each table of published studies. References direct the reader to the full literature for more comprehensive information prior to patient care decisions. Direct questions or comments regarding “Off-Label Drug Uses” to hospitalpharmacy@wolterskluwer.com.

Each month, subscribers to The Formulary Monograph Service receive 5 to 6 well-documented monographs on drugs that are newly released or are in late phase 3 trials. The monographs are targeted to your Pharmacy & Therapeutics Committee. Subscribers also receive monthly 1-page summary monographs on the agents that are useful for agendas and pharmacy/nursing inservices. A comprehensive target drug utilization evaluation (DUE) is also provided each month. With a subscription, the monographs are sent to you in print and are also available online. Monographs can be customized to meet the needs of your facility. Subscribers to the The Formulary Monograph Service also receive access to a pharmacy bulletin board, The Formulary Information Exchange (The F.I.X.). All topics pertinent to clinical and hospital pharmacy are discussed on The F.I.X.

Through the cooperation of The Formulary, Hospital Pharmacy publishes selected reviews in this column. If you would like information about The Formulary Monograph Service or The F.I.X., call The Formulary at 800-322-4349. The March 2008 monograph topics are nebivolol, 6% hydroxyethyl starch 130/0.4 in 0.9% normal saline, romiplostim, tocilizumab, and prasugrel. The DUE is on nebivolol.

This monthly feature will help readers keep current on new drugs, indications, dosage forms, and safety-related changes in labeling or use. Efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the information; however, if there are any questions, let us know at hospitalpharmacy@drugfacts.com.

Over the course of its evolution, the personal digital assistant (PDA) has grown from a predominantly offline, referential tool that had to be synchronized to a personal computer for updates to one that is integrated with a cell phone and subsequently yields high-speed global connectivity. This integration provides pharmacists with mobile access to virtually any available information from anywhere. Early uses of smartphones for Internet access were often frustrating due to slow speeds and poor reliability. The end user's experience with cellular broadband has changed dramatically over the last few years. What follows is an exploration of the technology and capabilities underlying PDA and smartphone connectivity.

The Director's Forum series is written and edited by Michael Sanborn and Robert Weber and is designed to guide pharmacy leaders in establishing patient-centered services in hospitals and health systems. Another specific goal of this column is to address many of the key challenges that pharmacy directors currently face, while providing information to foster growth in pharmacy leadership and patient safety. This Director's Forum article focuses on the use of consultants in pharmacies and in health care. This is a unique topic that most directors will address at one time or another during their careers.

Hospital Pharmacy presents this feature to keep pharmacists abreast of new publications in the medical/pharmacy literature. Articles of interest will be abstracted monthly regarding a broad scope of topics