Hello All,
We have been having trouble getting 2 Liter bags of sterile water for inhalation from Vyaire for the past several months and are faced with the possibility of going back to the 1 Liter bags. I would appreciate if anyone can share alternate sourcing for this product.

Chris Walsh

Dear all,

Is independent dual verification (IDV)/dual sign as defined by your hospital's specific medication list required in all care areas? In other words, if IDV is applied on the general med/surg floors for IV heparin bolus doses, for example, is it also required for IV heparin boluses in cardiac cath lab or interventional radiology suite?

If not required across the continuum of care, how did you justify the difference and define specific care areas in your policy?

Hello all!

I am looking to revise our HD policy to include an acceptable list of medications for nursing to give per protocol.

Can anyone share their policy on med admin around HD dialysis days? Do your nurses have the ability to hold or administer meds before dialysis per protocol.

I'm hoping to gather information to bring to our providers for review and consideration.

Thanks in advance!
Danielle

Hello all,

Can anyone share how you determine the number of pharmacists needed at your facility? My facility, a regional health center, is looking to add more pharmacists and wanted possibly evidence based data to justify the ask. We are currently seeing general RPh/Patient ratio of 1:30 is advised, but did not find data backing that number up.

Thanks!

Jacob Vogel, PharmD

Greetings.

Does anyone have experience with "draw down bag" method - for example, if patient's dose of IL is 56mLs. Instead of drawing into syringe 56 mls, you remove 44mls from premade bag and send the bag to the floor for administration.

We are entertaining this idea, since our NICU specialist believes that it can help to decrease possible contamination of lipids?

Thank you,

Natalie Kuchik PharmD,MS,BSCPC,CPS

Hello all,

We've had several cases lately where pharmacy staff have drawn up 10x the ordered dose for NICU patients. For example, 0.9 mL of clonidine suspension was drawn up instead of 0.09 mL. In one case, the dose made it to the floor before the nurse caught it.

The label shows the dose (0.9 mcg)in 2 different places, in addition to the concentration 10 mcg/mL and the volume 0.09 mL.

We are trying to increase our compliance with smart pump (alaris) guardrails in pediatrics. After some observations/rounding it seems a recurring issue with using the guardrails for pediatric patients is related to medications that are intended to be given IV push over a few minutes. Examples include opioids, ketorolac, furosemide etc that are obtained from the Omnicell and the patient specific dose drawn up by the RN. The RN then further dilutes the medication and hangs it on the syringe pump (via basic infusion) instead of standing and pushing the medication by hand.