This week, we will begin a comparison of the OSHA document "Controlling Occupational Exposure to Hazardous Drugs with USP <800> Hazardous Drugs-Handling in Healthcare Settings." Both chapters reference each other, but one is inherently enforceable (OSHA Document) and one (USP <800>) is enforceable only when adopted by an enforcing agency (State Boards of Pharmacy).

Provided below are some excerpts from the Introduction Sections of both documents for comparison. Throughout this series, it will be interesting to note the "recommendations" and "shoulds" of the OSHA document vs the "must" or "shall" of the USP document for essentially the same items.

OSHA Document
Introduction

This informational guidance document outlines OSHA's current recommendations for addressing the health and safety hazards faced by healthcare workers who handle HDs, and the background evidence underlying those recommendations.
...
These recommendations apply to all healthcare settings where employees are occupationally exposed to HDs [hazardous drugs], such as hospitals, physicians' offices, and home healthcare agencies. Because many of the same drugs used to treat humans are also used to treat animals, this guidance is applicable to veterinary practices as well. Sections dealing with work areas and prevention of employee exposure to HDs at a workplace refer to workplaces where pharmaceuticals are used in concentrations appropriate for patient therapy. In settings where employees work with drugs in a more potentially hazardous form (e.g., a more concentrated form encountered in certain components of pharmaceutical manufacturing), measures that afford employees a greater degree of protection from exposure are commonly employed and should be used. Many manufacturers have internal occupational exposure limits, but those limits are not generally available to regulatory agencies; workers may inquire about those limits from the manufacturers separately from the information available in the document.

USP <800>
Introduction and Scope

This chapter describes practice and quality standards for HDs to promote patient safety, worker safety, and environmental protection.
...
Entities that handle HDs must incorporate the standards in this chapter into their occupational safety plan. The entity's health and safety management system must, at a minimum, include:
...

More next week.

News

The "Unattainable Triangle" of Community Pharmacy
Quality, speed, and price are often referred to as the "Unattainable Triangle." Fast, good, cheap-pick any 2 but sacrifice the third. Each business faces this question every day when the doors are open for business. You can't have all 3. When you try to improve 1 side of the triangle, the other 2 sides are affected.
https://www.drugtopics.com/viewpoints/unattainable-triangle-community-pharmacy?rememberme=1&elq_mid=10529&elq_cid=857286&GUID=FC1FDFB4-DA2B-4026-863C-2C201B141680

Drug Shortages, Product Standardization Plague Intravenous Drug Delivery
Ongoing threats to the safety of intravenous (IV) drug delivery include drug shortages and lack of IV product standardization, according to a panel of healthcare providers that developed recommendations after receiving feedback from 30 healthcare industry leaders at the November 2018 Third Consensus Conference on the Safety of Intravenous Drug Delivery Systems. Some of the panel's findings included the following.

• The panel believes in the overall superiority of manufacturer ready-to-use products, and says they are the safest IV drug delivery systems, followed by outsourced, ready-to-use, pharmacy compounded, point-of-care activated, and non-pharmacy compounded at point of care.
• Drug shortages and lack of standardization are the 2 most significant threats to IV drug safety.
• Variations in IV medication concentrations during transitions of care within the same institution or between different facilities can increase the likelihood of a medication error.
• Specialized education, training, certification, and competency with regard to compounding of sterile preparations should be required for pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, and other involved healthcare providers.

https://www.drugtopics.com/surgical-care/drug-shortages-product-standardization-plague-iv-drug-delivery?rememberme=1&elq_mid=10529&elq_cid=857286&GUID=FC1FDFB4-DA2B-4026-863C-2C201B141680

Did You Know ...

...that T.S. Eliot once said the following?

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."

Tip of the Week

We are limited by certain physical, social, and legal restrictions but not so much in other ways. How far one can reach is, in many cases, dependent only upon the drive and dedication one has to excel.

"If we only push ourselves to our limits, that is as far as we can go.
If we push ourselves beyond our limits, that is how we grow."

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Looking Back

Special seats,
Reserved in hades,
For whiskered guys,
Who scratch the ladies!
     Burma-Shave