Inpatient Pharmacy Overview

From the amount of time we spent searching the hospital on our first day, it is probably apparent that NTUH is a very large hospital.  There are only two inpatient pharmacies that service the 2100 bed hospital.  On average, 19,000 prescriptions are processed per day.  There are approximately 150 pharmacists working at the hospital. Their duties consists of dispensing as well as clinical services such as dose adjustments, drug therapy selection, drug information, adverse drug reaction reporting and patient education.  Legally, pharmacists are the only ones that are allowed to dispense medications.  As a result, the ratio of pharmacist:technician is vastly different from that of the U.S.  In the UDD, there are 45 pharmacists, 10 clerks, and just 3 pharmacy technicians.  With each pharmacist covering 1-2 wards, their patient load is very high and most of the patient monitoring is done from the electronic medical record computer system.  One of the pharmacists I shadowed, 簡郁芳, said she was following about 60 patients.  In contrast, the Intensive Care Units have clinical pharmacists who attend morning rounds with physicians on a daily basis.