Education, training, and evaluation of hospital compounding personnel

Many practicing pharmacists who graduated in the past 20 years have little or no compounding education, training, or experience. With the change to the entry-level PharmD degree now underway in schools of pharmacy, the primary emphasis is on clinical practice instead of traditional pharmacy practice. Little or no compounding education is offered or required, even though demand for pharmacy compounding is steadily increasing. Since compounding is a specialized division of the hospital pharmacy department, the compounding staff is held to a higher in-house standard than the rest of the pharmacy department. According to the United States Pharmacopeia Chapter 795, any pharmacist or licensed healthcare professional who is responsible for preparing compounds is a "compounder." This definition includes compounding pharmacy technicians. Although compounding has always been part of hospital pharmacy practice, few hospital pharmacies have dedicated laboratories or staff for the specialized tasks of nonsterile compounding, high-risk sterile compounding, or unit-dose packaging. Since both the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations mandate that hospital personnel be properly educated and trained according to applicable legal and regulatory requirements and oranizational policy in order to fulfill their assigned tasks and responsibilities, the education, training, and evaluation of hospital compounding personnel is crucial.