Current status of preparation and distribution of medicines

The scope of hospital pharmacy practice has expanded over the past several decades beyond drug-product-oriented tasks to include patient-oriented clinical pharmacy services, investigational drug research, and pharmacist services in the emergency department. However, in most countries, pharmacists still devote considerable time to the dispensing and preparation of medicines. In my own estimation, Japanese hospital pharmacists spend about 60% of their time dispensing medicines to inpatients and outpatients, 15% of their time preparing injectable products, another 15% providing clinical pharmacy services on the wards, and 10% performing other services (e.g., drug information services, therapeutic drug monitoring, inventory management, pharmaceutical manufacturing, investigational drug studies). Improving the efficiency of dispensing and preparing medicines through the use of computer technology can reduce the amount of time spent on product-oriented activities and can enable pharmacists to devote more time to specialized patient-oriented clinical services. Nevertheless, dispensing and preparing medications are core pharmacy functions needed to ensure the safety and effectiveness of drug therapy. Analyses of medication-error reports reveal that errors occur in the dispensing and preparation steps of the medication-use process and that some of these errors result in patient harm or death.1,2