Pharmacy
At Northwest Health, hospital pharmacies play an important part in providing care for our patients. Our goal is to provide the best possible delivery of pharmaceutical care. In addition to overseeing all medication use and management, we provide many clinical services to our patients.
Clinical services include:
- Responding to drug information questions
- Monitoring patient liver/kidney function and recommend adjustments of medication doses to physicians
- Preparing intravenous (IV) solutions that aren't available from commercial suppliers
- Mixing antibiotics and other medications necessary for the IV route
- Serving on CMC teams to improve medication processes and other quality initiatives
- Adding/removing hospital-stocked medications to ensure the hospital is up-to-date on new medications
- Finding better ways to use older medications as medical information changes
- Responding to physician requests to monitor certain medications, especially antibiotics
- Continuously monitoring patient medication profiles to screen for potential drug/drug, drug/food and drug/disease-state interactions and allergies
- Changing some IV medications to oral as necessary to reduce the risks associated with IV therapy
- Reducing the amount of some medications you receive if your kidney function diminishes, reducing the risk of over-medication.
- Reviewing patients' pre-surgery antibiotic therapy to assure the correct dose and potential allergies have been taken into consideration
- Preparing and monitoring total parenteral nutrition solutions. These solutions are used for patients who cannot eat or have digestive system problems