Background: One aspect of ordering and prescribing medication is the requirement for a trained professional to review medication orders or prescriptions for appropriateness. In practice, this review process is usually performed by a clinical pharmacist. However, in many medical centers there is a shortage of staff and a pharmacist is not always available.Objective: To determine whether remote review of medication orders by a pharmacist is a plausible method in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU).Methods: A pharmacist from the pharmacy department reviewed medication orders of patients admitted to our PICU over a 7-month period for appropriateness. A special form for medical orders was filled in and sent to the physician in the PICU, who replied informing whether the recommendation had been accepted. The time spent by the pharmacist for this activity was recorded.Results: The review time for one medical record was 8.9 (95% CI, 6.9–10.9) min. Every additional drug prescribed increased the total review time by 0.8 (95% CI, 0.45–1.11) min. The pharmacist filled in 186 forms on 117 admissions for 109 children. The median review time was 15 (12.8–18.8) and 12 (9–15) min, respectively, for patients with psychiatric-neurologic disorders compared to those without (p = 0.032). Usually, a daily workload of 240 min was needed for the pharmacist accompanying the round in contrast to 108 min per day needed to review all the medical records in 95% of the cases. The physician accepted 51.2%, rejected 11.9%, and made no comment on 36.9% of the recommendations.Conclusion: Hospitals facing budget shortages can carry out focused remote reviews of prescriptions by the pharmacist.
A computer-controlled experimental setup is described, which allows simultaneous determination of electrolytic conductivity and differential thermal analysis in several cells. The setup can be used to study the processes occurring during phase transitions in multicomponent systems. Electrolytic conductivity is measured by the four-electrode method, allowing the use of a large variety of electrode materials that may be needed for corrosive media, while ensuring high accuracy. Conductivity values can be measured in the range of 10-sS to 1S. The system developed operates between -50 ~ and + i30~ and measurements can be conducted in eight cells in parallel. Both the temperature range and the number of cells can be readily extended. A Pyrex glass cell, in which a solid-state thermometer is physically separated from, yet in good thermal contact with, the solution, was designed, to allow work in highly corrosive liquids. The scope and validity of the experimental setup is verified by measurements in solutions of iodide salts in iodine and of NaC1 in water. It is observed that, in the two-phase region between the melting point of the pure solvent and that of the eutectic mixture, the specific conductivity is relatively high and does not change much with temperature. It seems that, just above the melting point of the eutectic, a small amount of the concentrated solution wets the surface of the solid particles, forming a continuous path of conductivity through the liquid between the electrodes.The measurement of the electrolytic conductivity of aqueous solutions can be performed with very high precision. Determination of the specific conductivity of pure ice is more difficult, because of interference of surface conductivity, and special techniques are employed. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in the determination of the specific conductivity of aqueous solutions below the melting point (1). Consider, for example, a 0.10M solution of NaCI: in the range between the melting point (-0.36~ and the eutectic point (-21.3~ two phases exist, and the measured specific conductivity is a complex function of temperature and initial concentration and may depend on such factors as cell configuration and rate of cooling. Similar behavior is expected when the conductivity of dilute solutions of iodides in liquid iodine is measured.When the conductivity is studied over a range of temperatures, it is important to correlate changes in conductivity observed with phase transitions occurring in the system. In the present work, a computer-controlled experimental setup, in which conductivity and differential thermal analysis (DTA) measurements can be made simultaneously, is described. The cell was designed to operate with highly corrosive materials such as liquid iodine or bromine.Results obtained for solutions of RbI in I2 between 50" and 130~ are shown, to demonstrate the usefulness of the experimental setup. Some data for dilute aqueous solutions of NaC1 are also shown, for comparison. The data obtained can provide further insight i...
Acomputer‐controlled experimental setup i‐s described, which allows simultaneous conductivity and DTA measurements parallel in eight cells.
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