Procedures and Protocols

PROCEDURES AND PROTOCOLS
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Procedures and Protocols
Introduction
An important role of a department manager in a healthcare facility is to ensure that the facility has a pharmacy with pharmacists who are well-trained and qualified; pharmacists who can effectively handle, store, and monitor drugs. Furthermore, the department manager needs to ensure that there are systems which are structured to ascertain that pharmaceutical practices actually adhere to the current legislative measures. In this case, medication management may not be considered as a sole responsibility of a pharmaceutical service provider but a collective responsibility that is shared with the managers and other clinical care providers. Medical, pharmaceutical, nursing and administrative practitioners are therefore, tasked with a collective responsibility of developing approaches aimed at handling, storing, and monitoring drugs. This paper seeks to establish some of the effective protocols and procedures in regards to handling, storing and the monitoring of different medications
Procedures Aimed at Handling Drugs
Procedures are significant especially in fostering a clinical culture that supports efforts directed towards the safe handling, storing and monitoring of drugs in effective care within a health care environment (Trovato & Tuttle, 2014). In this case, a department manager needs to make sure that protocols and procedures are developed within a health organization to ensure the safe handling, storing, and effective monitoring as well as the dispensation of medical drugs.
It is notable that all drugs, either controlled or uncontrolled, should be stored in a secure and locked area. Alternatively, medications within a health facility should be stored in accordance with some of the conditions that are listed by their manufacturers with the aim of ensuring their stability (Trovato & Tuttle, 2014). Furthermore, all refrigerated drugs need to be stored under suitable and appropriate conditions in adherence to the prescribed temperatures of refrigeration and should be checked during each shift.
Medication Storage
According to Polovich and Martin (2011), light sensitive drugs need to be stored away from light with special attention directed towards the storage of standard concentrations, sound-alike/look-alike, and concentrated electrolyte medications. It is also important to ensure that drugs used externally are stored in a separate compartment from some of the drugs that are administered internally (Polovich & Martin, 2011). Pharmacists also need to ensure that these medications are labeled and only the authorized personnel are allowed to access the storage areas for controlled substances. In addition, the codes for storage safes need to be changed regularly and the access codes provided to the designated licensed personnel within the organization.
Another thing that needs to be considered is access to the controlled drug stores and the need to restrict these areas to unauthorized persons (Polovich & Martin, 2011). In this case, it is essential to ensure that the keys to the narcotic cabinets are always in safe custody and should never be left unattended. When computer-controlled cabin...