The safety aspect alone was enough for her to start looking into
adding the ready-made drugs to her inventory, but she soon discov-
ered other benefits.
"For something like ephedrine, I didn't realize anesthesia had to
dilute the medication from the ampoules before drawing them up for
use," says Ms. Bergeron. "So there was a major time-savings and con-
venience component to using prefilled drugs, too."
But that wasn't all. "I saw a noticeable lift in the morale of anesthe-
sia," she says.
Ms. Bergeron is part of a growing group of surgical facility leaders
who use prefilled syringes on a daily basis. One-fourth (25.71%) of the
105 leaders in hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers we surveyed
use prefilled syringes "daily." More than one-half (51.43%) "never" use
these medications, 4.76% use them "a few times per week" and 5.71%
use them "once per month or so." Another 12.38% rarely go the pre-
filled route.
Top prefilled medications
The most common prefilled syringe is phenylephrine, followed by
lidocaine, ephedrine, propofol and succinylcholine. Sheldon S. Sones,
RPh, FASCP, a pharmacy consultant and safe medication management
officer at more than 130 ambulatory facilities, says there are 4 com-
pelling reasons these meds are purchased from compounding pharma-
cies:
• Ease of administration. Prefilled medications are easy for anes-
thesia to administer. Plus, these drugs minimize questions about ster-
ile technique. When your staff is drawing up the syringes themselves,
it's a process that's rife with potential problems. With prefilled
syringes, you simply take off the cap and inject it, says Mr. Sones.
• Specific dosing needs. This is especially true in the case of intra-
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