Evaluating Pharmacy Practice in Hospital Settings in Jeddah City, Saudi Arabia: Dispensing and Administration—2019

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the dispensing and administration processes in hospital settings in Jeddah city, Saudi Arabia. Method: A questionnaire based on the annual ASHP national survey was distributed among 35 hospitals. The response rate was 60%. After a follow-up period of 6 months, the final questionnaire was collected in November 2019. Result: The survey had a 60% response rate. Most surveyed hospitals have centralized pharmacies (76.2%). Few hospitals reported the use of the Bar Code Medication Administration BCMA system (19.0%) to verify doses during dispensing, and only 28.6% use automated dispensing cabinets. The main method to check unit doses in pharmacies is the “technician fills/pharmacist checks” method, as reported by 76.2% of hospitals. Conclusion: The new technologies in the field of healthcare are impacting the practice of medication distribution. Hospital pharmacies in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia are implementing many changes to improve the medication-use system. However, more work has to be done to follow the leaders in the area of pharmacy practice.

Issues Faced by Pharmacy Technicians While Maintaining Automated Dispensing Cabinets and How to Overcome Them in the National Guard Health Affairs in Riyadh: A Qualitative Study

“…One of those few papers was published in 2012, showing that only three hospitals in Riyadh were using ADCs integrated with the pharmacy system [16,20]. Another paper reported that in 2019, only 28.6% of Jeddah hospitals used ADCs [21]. This technology is relatively new here, yet the number of ADCs has increased over the years [11,16].…”