Hospital pharmacy management in a tertiary care charitable hospital: Compliance study with quality standards

Abstract

Objective: To perform a qualitative and quantitative comparison of the practice and infrastructure with applicable legislations governing hospital pharmacy while the secondary objective was to calculate the average dispensing time of a prescription in the hospital pharmacy. Materials and methods: A prospective observational study was carried out in the hospital pharmacy for one year. A blend of quality control parameters was drafted after referring various guidelines put forward by the statutory bodies. Qualitative data was collected by continuous observation, physical inspection and after a thorough interview of hospital pharmacists. The collected data was summarized and compared with the standards. Quantitative data on the minimum requirement of hospital pharmacy infrastructure and dispensing time was collected by using the designed data collection form and analysis was performed using SPSS (version 20.0). Results: The hospital pharmacy met all the criteria that are necessary to satisfy legal requirements, availability of medicine, medicine and general safety and most of the quality parameters. However, few deviations were observed in the management of the drug store. The shortage in the floor space and waiting area was identified. The average dispensing time without waiting was 113.93 ± 28.92 s and the time spent collectively for dispensing and waiting was measured to be 533.13 ± 128.51 Sec. The average waiting time in the hospital pharmacy was approximately around 419 Sec. Conclusion: Majority of the quality parameters were noted to be compliant with the standards. Few deviations were identified and measures to improve them were suggested.

Keywords

• Compliance
• Dispensing time
• Hospital pharmacy infrastructures
• Legal requirements
• Quality control