Essay Wastage of Medicines

Submitted By Nerosh007
Words: 1941
Pages: 8
Open Document
WASTAGE OF MEDICINES AT CENTRAL HOSPITAL
Organisation Information
Central Hospital is a developed and leading Tertiary Care Private Hospital in central part of Sri Lanka. It functions with full multispecialty units for 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. It also delivers Out-patient Care, Inward care Units, Cardiac surgery unit, General surgery unit, Eye unit and Theatre and a newly developed Neurological Unit. It has three pharmaceutical supplying units for every individual department. Central Hospital is a busy hospital where all the specialist doctors from all over the Island come for channelling, surgeries, rehabilitation, counselling and inpatient consultation for all the referrals.
Due to the busiest environment in Central Hospital a massive purchasing and selling of medicines takes place every month. The purchasing of drugs, injections, gels, creams, and miscellaneous medical and non-medical items were purchased daily and weekly. Especially the injections for the theatre unit such as anaesthetic drugs and post-operative care unit drugs had been ordered in massive numbers. The pharmaceutical department is divided into three categories. One is the out-patient pharmacy, second is indoor pharmacy and the last main one which is pharmacy storage. The chain of request and supply occurs every day between department and stores. Every division has a pharmacist who requests for drugs from store and the store releases the same day to the units. The out-patient pharmaceutical unit and the indoor unit is subdivided under the pharmacy store.

The Challenge
Expiring or wastage of huge number of medicines in Central Hospital every month.
In Central Hospital every month there were about five hundred thousand rupees worth of drugs expired and thrown away. Though the hospital was busy, the proper identification and usage of medicines and the chain of purchasing and procurement was not developed. However, the day to day operations kept running and after few months the wastage of drugs started increasing. Every month end in the management meeting this issue was taken and discussed but a solution was not found to resolve this issue. Times later the wastage declined but it was declined by reducing the numbers of drugs purchased, but this did not help as they ran out of medicines quickly and there were times where patients were turned back without medicines for their treatment. Many pharmaceutical companies import drugs monthly in a particular quantity to supply their customers. When Central Hospital purchased in small quantity, other competitors bought drugs continuously in bulk amount. Once the supplier runs out of stock the hospital had to wait until they purchase their next stock. Wastage of medicines became an issue and challenge to reduce the expiry and wastage of drugs was not commenced by the management. The proper inventory management system was not introduced even after they lost plenty of money by expired medicines.
Reasons
The fundamental reason and factors contributing to the expiry were medicine procured with short shelf life while purchasing without planning, plenty of same generic drugs appeared with different company names and the doctors do not prescribe the same group more than once, though the law says the doctors should prescribe the generic names only, but it is not practised yet (Nakyanzi et al, 2010). Wilcock (2005) support the argument of Nakyanzi et al (2010) by stating an incident in Uganda. Thirty percent of expired medicines were given to municipality due to short shelf life, medicines effected by abrupt cessation of use or the government medicine policy change, medicines with unpleasant taste, oncology drugs and some donated medicines. These contributing factors has to be analysed in order to reduce the wastage of medicines. For example, cancer patients tend to go to government funded hospitals as the medicine for cancers are highly expensive and some cannot claim through their insurance. Due to these
Show More

Related Documents: Essay Wastage of Medicines

Turnover Time In Operating Theater

According to The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), quality health care defined “as doing the right thing for the right patient, at the right time, in the right way to achieve the best possible results.” And Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences defined quality health care as “safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient and equitable.” So, it will be very important to reduce turnover time in the operating theater which will make more operating…

Words 999 - Pages 4

Abortion: Abortion and Abortion Women Assume Essay

The Benefits of Abortion Christine May Rodriguez English Composition- ENGL 150 Instructor Madeleine Wakefield Wednesday, March 19, 2014 The Benefits of Abortion Women assume freedom with regards to reproductive choices base on her knowledge and belief. However, “abortion is the most degrading inhuman…

Words 1152 - Pages 5

Nurse Prescribing V150 a Case Study Essay

UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND NURSE PRESCRIBING V150 CASE STUDY COURSE: NURS09125 BANNER NUMBER: B00113677 DATE OF SUBMISSION 13/12/10 COURSE LEADER FRANCES DOWNER WORD COUNT: 3745 CONTENTS PAGE 1. INTRODUCTION & GENERAL OVERVIEW, Pgs3-4. 2. ASSESSMENT PROCESS, Pgs 5-8 3. TREATMENT OPTIONS, Pgs 9-12. 4. EVALUATION, Pgs 13-16 5. CONCLUSION. Pg 17 6. COPY OF PRESCRIPTION, Pg 18 7. REFERENCE SECTION, Pgs 19-23 8…

Words 4598 - Pages 19

Today's Pharmaceutical Supply Chain

Today’s Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Buad 3130 7/30/2013 Outline I. Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Structure Pharmaceutical Setups Warehouses Wholesellers II. Emerging Medicines and their effects Buy and Bill Trends Biologics III. Emerging Supply Chains Infusion Centers Ambulatory Surgery Centers IV. Weaknesses in Supply Chain Shortages Lack of Innovation 2 Pharmaceutical Supply Chain So we start as a patient walking into a physician office, we often leave with a prescription…

Words 4216 - Pages 17

Susutainability Development in O & G Industry Essay

Running head: Statoil Sustainability Statoil’s Sustainability Related Activities [Name of the Instructor] [Name of the Institution] [Date] Table of Contents Introduction 1 Description of the Organization 1 Impact of Statoil activities of the environment 3 Importance of Statoil acting in a Responsible Manner 4 Alternative Energy 5 Acting in Accordance with Laws 5 Water Management 6 Sustainable Shipping Strategy 7 Stopping Spills 8 Biodiversity 8 Natural Gas 9…

Words 3974 - Pages 16

Everest Simulation Reflection Essay

good for conflict resolution, however using this approach we also achieved a solid team score. In hindsight, I believe a more autocratic approach to leadership should have been employed in order to improve the team score and to minimise time wastage. An article by Judge, Piccolo and Ilies (2004) suggested an initiating structure of leadership is highly correlated to objective outcomes including “leader job performance and group – organisation performance” (Judge, Piccolo and Ilies 2004 pp36)…

Words 3201 - Pages 13

Procurement plan Essay

Procurement plan The procurement plan for the NHS hospital development may be undertaken through the following steps and processes: 1. Procurement guidelines: a) Goods and services shall be procured under and in accordance with NHS guidelines and provisions outlining the functioning and operation of such procedures. b) Outsourced services, consultants, off-branch goods and services are to be procured in accordance with the requisite NHS guidelines and project specifications. c) Standard bidding…

Words 1981 - Pages 8

Essay about Mcdonalds Supply Chain Strategy

farms to processing plants to the restaurant, McDonald's Quality Inspection Programme (QIP) carries out quality checks at over 20 different points in the Cold Chain system. Setting up of the Cold Chain has also enabled it to cut down on operational wastage Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) is a systematic approach to food safety that emphasizes prevention within its suppliers' facility and restaurants rather than detection through inspection of illness or presence of microbiological…

Words 3425 - Pages 14

Weightlifting And Exercise

The athlete needs to meet specific nutritional needs in order to receive the full benefits from the fluids and food he takes in. As he is undertaking in the sport of weightlifting he will need to look at the nutrition guidelines and implement them in his own nutritional plan to gain the maximal benefits from his diet and fluid intake. Weightlifting’s demands in competition are explosive single efforts where the athlete has significant recovery times to produce a maximal performance. This is the same…

Words 2582 - Pages 11

Noise in the Nicu Essay examples

been found to cause a response in the adrenal cortex and sympathetic nervous system which can cause an increased release in adrenocorticotropic hormone and increased production of cortisol. These changes can cause long lasting effects such as muscle wastage, hypoglycemia, and a compromised immune system (Brown, 2009). Besides contributing to stress, excessive noise in the NICU has also been shown to contribute to hearing loss in preterm infants. Numerous studies have examined noise levels in the NICU…

Words 2653 - Pages 11