Dekalb Hospital Site Description - Essay Example

Dekalb hospital site This paper, based on an interview and personal observation, offers a of Dekalp hospital’s site and its associated pharmacy. A description of the site Dekalb hospital is located along 751 N. Endiam in Clarkston city in the state of Florida. It offers services to acute care type of patients with a primary focus on pharmaceutical care. Its patient population is majorly adults, forming 70 percent while geriatric type of patients forms the remaining 30 percent. The hospital has six pharmacists. While five of these work on a full time basis, on an average of between 30 to 40 hours in a week, the remaining one works on a part time basis at a labor hour rate of 20 hours in a week. It also has five technicians, four full time employees and one employed on a part time basis. Currently, the organization is not affiliated to any academic institution. It has one full time specialized position, no part time specialized position and is an accredited residency site. Dekalp’s practice type is a hospital with 201 beds though its average patient rate 70. Its basic services are medical/ surgery, ICU, ER, psychiatry, and infectious disease but it also offers services in alcohol and drug therapy, rest care, diagnosis image, occupational therapy, orthopedics, physical therapy, and skilled nursing care. It also offers radiology services besides distributive services such as centralized unit dose distribution, decentralized unit dose distribution, IV preparation, TPN compounding, chemotherapy compounding among others. Further, it offers non distributive services such as patient rounds, pharmacokinetics, therapeutic consults, IV to PO conversion, drug information, newsletter provision, P&T committee/Formulatory development, Nursing/Physician/other healthcare practitioner education, chart writing privileges, laboratory test order protocol, infectious disease service, nutritional support service and anticoagulation service. The organization monitors its patients on an average of 30 to 40 patients per day and adopts a bar-coding identification for non-distributive services. Its documentation system is Car Fusion-med Mind with application of barcode scanning, medication dispensing cabinets and robots for automation. The hospital derives its economics of practice from Medicare, Medicaid and private pay insurance on a 30 percent, 10 percent, and 50 percent contribution basis. Description of the pharmacy’s physical layout The pharmacy is securely situated on the left side of the lobby on the hospital’s first floor and is under tight security that approves all entries. Once in the pharmacy that is about 800 squires, there is a wide working table at the centre and the director’s office to the right. The pharmacy’s products are situated at different points. With the working table as a point of reference and an observer facing the pharmacy’s door, oral and IV medicine are on the shelf to the observer’s right. The topical, suppositories, and virginal medicines are on the shelf to the left, ‘oral again’, ‘EENT’, respiratory medicine, liquid solution medicine are on the back shelf while ‘injectable’ medicines, vials, and syringes are to the front front. A refrigerator for thermal sensitive oral suspension, including IV, and a cabinet safe for controlled products are also to the right. Access to the safe is only possible upon provision of a user ID, a password and finger print identification. Further behind, is the IV room that is sterile and isolated from the pharmacy by a wall that is made of glass. Description of the personnel, job titles, and responsibilities The pharmacy has a director, whose name is ‘XXX’. His responsibilities range from coordination of the pharmacy’s activities, ensuring personnel’s compliance to legal and ethical obligations and development and implementation of policies. The pharmacy also has a clinical pharmacy manager who coordinates the normal routines among patients, physicians, and nurses. There is also a doctor for patients’ examination and clinical pharmacists for products’ identification and dispensation. Another class of personnel is a group of five pharmacy technicians whose roles include receiving medication orders and providing the medicines to the PYXIS machines for dispensation. The pharmacists full time work basis range from 30 to 40 hours per week while the technicians’ full time basis work schedule is four hours a week. Primary preceptor roles and responsibilities My preceptor was the clinical pharmacy manager whose responsibility is to coordinate and regulate patients’ medications. She supervises both physicians and nurses, helping them in decision-making. Organizational chart The pharmacy has a semi structured organizational chart with its director at the top management level. The director coordinates all the organization’s activities and links the pharmacy with its external environment. The next level of the pharmacy’s organization structure is the office of the pharmacy manager who is in charge of the routine operations and coordinates the roles of nurses and physicians. The remaining personnel operate in an unstructured set up with directives from the pharmacy manager. Services and activities provided by the pharmacy The pharmacy operates and is managed independently from the hospital. Its independence from the hospital, in operations is also observable from the physical boundary that exist between the two and its management that is under Cardianal Health Care’s management, and not the Hospital’s. The pharmacy’s services are only restricted to DekalbHospitl’s in patient care. My preceptor who is the pharmacy manager for example offers services, together with doctors and nurses, on the hospital’s floor. The institution, through its pharmacists, also delivers medication to patients based on doctors and nurses’ prescriptions. Other activities include operation of PYXIS for delivery of medications. Pharmacy’s workflow on an average day The pharmacy operates on two programmed schedules, weekdays’ program, and weekend program. Its workflow from Monday to Friday begins at seven o’clock in the morning and ends at ten o’clock in the evening while the weekend workflow schedule is a 12-hour schedule that begins at seven o’clock in the morning and ends at seven o’clock in the evening. The pharmacy also operates an emergency specific schedule that runs for 24 hours a day and is available on demand through telephone calls. The site’s involvement in training pharmacy students The pharmacy offers practice opportunity to students. The chances are available to both IPPE and APPE pharmacy students. Its training opportunity includes patient counseling, review of patient history and approaches to interviewing patients. Its training approach is similar to that of academic institutions that include assignments and examinations besides offering pharmacy based jobs. Read More